Brakes made of cheese?

[fronty]

I had to borrow a diddy likkle Q5 for a couple days recently whilst my Q7 was being serviced, the brakes felt much sharper, just a light tap and they brought me to a screeching halt. My old car (a Passat R36) also had fantastic brakes, you just had to breathe on them to come to a shuddering halt. By contrast I have to push pretty hard on my Q7 brakes before anything starts to happen - I appreciate it's a big heavy car but I was really quite surprised just how bad they are when I switched back from the Q5 to Q7.

Is there something wrong with my brakes or are the brakes really this bad? It's even worse when the car is loaded up with people and luggage.

This might explain why the damn pre-sense alarm keeps going off! I find I have to anticipate much farther ahead than I'm used to.

[wardienet]

I had front brakes & discs replaced recently and did notice a difference, but I wouldn’t say they were bad before. Now very sharp. No issues. Suggest you get yours checked out, not something to take chances with. I don’t know what others’ experiences have been like on brakes but I couldn’t find any independent dealers to replace discs (UK south east) as I phoned a few but they said on the 4M only Audi dealers could get the parts at the moment... Not sure why, sounded a bit BS. Hence ended up costing £££. Also when dealer changed mine they needed some sort of special spring hat took a week to come from Audi HQ in Deutschland.


Q7 MY16 272PS S-Line Tech/Tour/Trailer packs, orca black, 21 inch 9.5J rims, rotor grey leather, sunroof, BOSE, ambient lighting, reversing cam, drivers memory seat. Gtechniq Crystal Serum Ultra. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk.

[Retom]

There are 2 options for not OEM front brake pads: A.B.S. and PowerStop (US). I haven't any experience with these pads but I found a lot of very positive opinions about PowerStop. For rear brakes it is much easier, additionally we can buy Brembo and TRW. All these options are much cheaper then OEM and are available via e-commerce. Some shops are located even in UK. I did this investigation since I will have soon to replace my brake pads.
Replacement of front pads is not a "rocked science" and could be done but almost every service even not specialised in Audi. For rear pads service needs a computer with at least VCP which has already this option for Q7 4M.

[Crasher]

It wasn’t a Q7 but an A3 Quattro we did last year and the brakes felt awful, they were new ish but would not stop the car without it feeling like you were driving a Mk1 Golf GTI... these had scary brakes.... We took the pads out and they were APEC so we fitted new Padgid pads and discs and normal service was resumed. I had an odd one a few years ago, I fitted a HiSpec 305mm disc kit to a Mk2 16v using EBC Greenstuff pads and it was terrible, you could not lock the front wheels. I changed the pads only to Black Diamond Predator and you could nearly put yourself through the screen. I spoke to an EBC tech about it and he said it was the rear pads.... I could not be bothered to argue...