Passat Rear Brakes

[rollhard]

Hi everyone,
After reading all the posts about the passat's rear brakes i guess it is normal for them to wear out so early on in the cars life. My friend has an 02 passat with only 19k miles on it. I was changing her rear pads but am having problems trying to get the rear brake piston to go in. When i turn it clockwise it goes in a little bit then stops. It would spin and spin but would not go in any further. Someone mentioned to that i need to pump the brakes 20 times to disengage the abs? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[boschmann]

Ther are special tools to put pressure on the piston while turning.

[hauker]

Even better ... go to Autozone and get the tool there (~30 bucks) ... use it ... and return it again.

They actually suggested this procedure to me themselves - and the tool looked accordingly ... nevertheless, I had a perfectly working "turn-and-press-at-the-same-time" tool for 3 hours and they took it back with no problem.

A warning: When I changed my pads I (of course) used non-VW ones (lot cheaper) -and I didn't realize that there were two lips (one on each side) that had to go beneath the pads to apply pressure. - While my job worked fine for weeks, at some point I started hearing a rattling noise coming from the outside rear of the car ...

After weeks of not beeing able to locate it, I took it to the dealer and they quickly found two things: The non-VW pads and the fact that the lips were not were they were supposed to ... "who did this?" - I was kinda embarrassed and in a hurry, so they did it for me - and charged for a regular brake job (2 man-hrs) ... although it took them 20 min! An expensive ($160) lesson learned ...