We Bought this "Junk" Twin Turbo Audi RS7 & took it Straight to the Dealership...

Sam, this is honestly a solid channel. You do an excellent job of explaining repairs for DIYers. Everything is clear, concise down to the links for inexpensive tools and parts. I don’t think you get enough appreciation. Thanks for all the great info!

For those interested in the OBD2 scanner, read the fine print for the one Sam's using before committing to the purchase. It will become a brick after the first year if you don't spend another $50 to renew the subscription every year after that. Probably still worth it if you work on cars a lot...

Love it how he exposes the dealers and their overpriced services.

You need a cheap digital caliper set. You could check the thickness of the rotors yourself and know if they are worth refinishing or replacing.

BMW dealer tech here, some of the prices we charge are insane. We’re at price level 14 on parts (that means 14 levels over MSRP) and over $260 an hour in labor. A normal front and rear brake job with pads and rotors can go for over $3k for just a regular every day car. M cars are an even bigger price hike. It’s absolutely crazy

119k miles on a modern Audi? Thats got to be some kind of record!

17:37 PUFFIN ON ZOOTIEZ Sam, you're truly a man of culture 🤝

You can reset the oil change message yourself. There are two messages that you are mixing up. "Inspection Due" and "Service Due". The "Service Due" message you can reset yourself by clicking "Car" by MMI panel, clicking the bottom left quadrant button, "Servicing and Checks", click "Service Intervals", scroll to bottom and click "Reset oil change interval". Takes about 30 seconds at most. The "Inspection Due" you do have to reset with a VCDS/VAG-COM scanner, but the "Service due" oil change message you can do without any scanner. I also recommend changing the coding from 10,000 mile interval to 5,000 interval so everytime you reset the intervals, they start at 5,000 miles and not 10,000.

The dealership wanted over $5k to replace the rotors and brakes on my Audi. I bought 'custom' rotors from a supplier (whom I wouldn't recommend even though the rotors came out fine), new pads + braided lines, scan tool and misc parts/tools for under $3k total. Audi uses a very soft steel on their rotors, so they tend to score and groove worse than other brands or aftermarket. Additionally, an odd thing about Audi (at least mine) the rear brakes wear a lot faster than the front. The theory is that the adaptive cruise control and low speed braking use the rear brake bias to slow the car so you don't have that jerky lurch forward in stop and go traffic.

I think it was a good temporary solution. Definitely replace the rotors at some point down the line.

Development engineer for radars here :) To calibrate the radars you can pop off the cap and use the mirror behind it with a simple cross laser. Park on flat surface, and use a target board in from of the vehicle with a mark at the same height with the mirror. For horizontal alignment, you can just use a tube behind the rear wheels and get that axis projected to the front, and you can set the distance between the mirror and the reflected laser vertical line to be parallel with that. This is the simplest way usually, and if your radar doesn't have a mirror but a flat front face, you can still attach a small mirror with a piece of tape on top of that.

This video is why I like you, you encourage people to do their own work and not always have to replace parts. And you show how to do it with the right tools. You also have a great attitude towards it. Well done man. Thanks.

Here in New Zealand you can call a brake skimming company, they remove the rotors and skim off the ridges

find disc specs and measure thickness to see if they are within wear limits

I've been doing this kind of craigslist brake rebuild since before craigslist. Works like a champ!

Great vid, thanks Sam. Audi engineers are the best, no question about it. They managed to develop an interchangeable steering wheel from left to right and back at the touch of a button 18:09...

Sam can’t resist a ‘bargain’ but it always makes for good watching

I think the ball hone is fine as long as the rotors aren't warped and the thickness is within spec. The ball will take off any glaze and help the pads seat.

Definitely measure the minimum thickness of those rotors, as long as there in spec and you don't have abnormal vibration your brake job should be just fine.

Nice work. Those rotors WILL need to be replaced one day, but being single piston rears (I'm surprised at that) it may actually be 5 years before you need to do that!