Okay so i replaced the front rotors and pads and now my pedal is soft.

Yes i pumped it a few times and even bedded them in a bit.

My pedal behavior:

• Pushes to the flood
• After a little pumping it firms up but then gets sloppy by the next time i need to use the brakes
• Decent braking power when the pedal is to the floor but something is still wrong here

Any ideas guys?

 

Sounds like air in the lines. I would bleed them all. Brake fluid ages and brakes down a bit - I too have a 98 a4 and I bled my system recently. A lot of bad looking fluid came out. Grab a friend and a tall bottle of brake juice and go to it. If you have air in the lines you may have faulty brake line, bleeder, etc. Do you see escaping fluid around the brake components? Is the mc full? Good luck.

 

do a brake flush and replace the brake lines from rubber to stainless steel braided brake lines.

 

well now i have a wierd scraping noise coming from the FR side disassembling

 

I have the same exact diagnostic after changing the front calipers and tubing.
Went like this for some time and now replaced the master cylinder, got a bit better but returned to almost the same.

Did you find the problem? How did you fixed it?


When I go over a hole in the road one of the pads seems to get misaligned and starts rubbing against the rotor. This goes away when I brake and release, until the next hole...

 

Did you grease up the caliper pins + slide points? Did you make sure the little metal retaining clip is on correctly?

Also it sounds like you just need to bleed them a bit. I replaced the pads once without any bleeding (pushing the pistons back and forcing the fluid back up) and I still somehow got air in the lines. Just bled them and I was fine.

 

I don't think they greased anything at the shop.
Regarding the retaining clips, I don't think they would mess it up, but there's always that possibility.
Still, it went in for other repairs a few times so probably someone would notice that...


I've replaced the master cylinder and the guys bled the system at least 2 times (or at least it's what they said).
My guess is that I might have air in the ABS system and I might have to run VAGCOM bleed option or as someone said, bleed the ABS manually...

 

I have 0 experience bleeding ABS systems sorry

 

I've checked the oil level an it went from max to about half in 1 or 2 years (don't really remember when I changed the master cylinder... ).
So I'm probably having a leak somewhere, maybe that's a clue to this issue.
I'm going to check it when I change the transmission cover.