Over the past couple of days I have felt like there was something wrong with my breaks because when I started the car the breaks went ALL the way down, there was almost no pressure on them whatsoever. My brake fluid level is fine and after I moved the car and drove for a while is when I would get pressure back on the car. So today I get on the highway and I'm going around 80MPH and I notice that the car feels heavy (it is not moving as smoothly), so when I get to a stop light I take my foot off the break and I see that the car ISNT moving (its an automatic). Then I proceed to get in the nearest parking lot I find and I turn off the car look at my tires and see that my front-passenger side tire has smoke coming from the caliper/rotor. The caliper was STUCK to the rotor, I took the tire off and tried to move the rotor to no avail, it took me a WHILE to get it to move a little, after I put the tire back on the breaks were a little back to normal for about 5mins then the breaks started locking up again. I waited another 30mins with the car off and then the breaks went back to normal again, but I am sure something is wrong with the caliper, I haven't taken it to the mechanic but I will on Monday, till then I dont plan on moving the car. Any ideas what it might be?


Also, on an unrelated note, a few other issues I've been having:

1) Whenever my temperature system (fan/ac) is on (mostly heat) and I am not going too fast (maybe 20MPH) and sometimes when breaking and moving the steering wheel to the right (as if I were slightly turning) I hear a noise, it is like a grinding noise, it goes away when I move the steering wheel to the left, and sometimes it won't go away until I turn the temperature system off altogether. Ideas?

2) I currently change my oil (I use 7500mile mobilone) every 6000 miles and my oil filter every 3000, is there an advantage to this over changing my oil filter with my oil? (So for every oil change I change my oil filter twice, once when I change the oil, and I put in a second filter at 3000 miles).

3) My transmission gives me a slight (but noticeable) 'kick' when changing from drive to reverse and vice versa, I wait for the car to come to a complete stop before doing this. Also in two ocurrences the car has not responded when I accelerated, I had to manually downshift (tiptronic) to a lower gear before the car would pickup speed again after this happened. Ideas?

I have a 98 A6 Quattro, I don't know when the last time the transmission was serviced, or if it needs to be serviced now (I plan to find out soon), the same for the engine. It has 94,800 miles.

Any help/ideas would be appreciated.

 

sounds like the piston in the caliper is stuck. how much was left on the pads. sometimes when the pads are really worn the piston sticks from being pushed out. it would be a good idea to have a fluid flush. might need a new caliper or a rebuild.
if you dont know if the tranny was ever serviced, have it done.

as far as the oil goes, i do the oil & filter every 3-4 thousand miles. try using a good synthetic oil, mobil 1, amsol and a mann filter. at 94k miles has the timing belt been done?

you are in nyc, where do you bring your car?

also hurah for the bilzzard, go quattro

 

OK yeah, I guess I am going to have the tranny serviced.

I don't think the timing belt has been done either, I plan on taking care of that before the 100k miles when I do the engine tune up.

And the pads are almost new, so I don't know what is going on, but I will have the rotors cleaned and if the calipers have to be rebuilt, have them rebuilt (or get new ones).

Right now I am taking my car to a mechanic in the BX that has worked on VWs, I still haven't found an Audi mechanic that I could afford and that isn't super far from where I live (Inwood).

- mig