Chuffing 07 VW Passat Electronic Handbrake!!!

Chuffing 07 VW Passat Electronic Handbrake!!!

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Discussion

Mr Red Barron

Original Poster:

1,568 posts

208 months

Wednesday 19th February 2014
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In Aug, my 07 Passat Sport Estate got the dreade Electronic Handbrake Warning light come on. After spending over £400 replacing the brake motor and caliper on the o/s/r the n/s/r has now gone. Only this time it's gone whilst the brake was on and I can't get it off my drive!!

I've looked into it online and the sheer number of cars that have been affected by this is unbelievable. How can VW get away with not recalling this?

I've tried disconnecting the battery, trying to move the car forwards and backwards whilst trying to free the brake and i've had the wheel off to try and manually release the motor but don't have the correct tools or know how to release it. If I could just get it to move I could take it to my local VW specialist who can replace the motor........any one else suffered with this?

911ked

40 posts

135 months

Wednesday 19th February 2014
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Hi,

Yes - Christmas eve my friend - parked my car in the garage and the Passat outside the doors when ours failed - left us with zero cars to use. Even VW recovery guys struggled with it and had to used skates in the end to slide it on the truck, turned out to be the control module for the park brake - although I have heard it can be the button in the dash that goes down. Good luck with it....

Chippo1

344 posts

123 months

Wednesday 19th February 2014
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Sorry to say chaps but I keep thinking about these dam things and how they work and I am sorry to say not surprised they fail and the cost of the dam things to fix.

Why oh why do the idiots at Audi, VW, Seat, Skoda ( yes all no doubt from the same parts bin with different labels )think its a step forward , the dam things don't even work in my opinion, it's on , it's off nothing in between ,
the servos go into stall as the brakes are applied all sounds like terrible engineering to me . And then of course they are to slow to disengage leaving the brakes dragging , sounds like a good wheeze to relieve you all of lots of money for spares !

I have a new Audi A4 , which I sincerely regret choosing , never again !




blueg33

35,901 posts

224 months

Thursday 20th February 2014
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I have had my A6 for 7 years and 116k miles. There has never been a single problem with the electronic parking brake and I don't see that many comments in the Audi forums.

Maracus

4,237 posts

168 months

Thursday 20th February 2014
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My mate's 07 Passat had a failed parking brake a few months ago, it was the caliper that had failed.

It has got 160k on it.

Mr Red Barron

Original Poster:

1,568 posts

208 months

Thursday 20th February 2014
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Well...........it failed on Monday evening. Yesterday I had a recovery wagon fail to get it off my drive onto his truck and now i'm waiting for a specialst recovery wagon to come and jack the car up on skids so it can go to the garage. So 3 days and still no further to getting it back on the road. Angry isn't the word!!!

anonymous-user

54 months

Sunday 23rd February 2014
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Hateful thing the electronic handbrake, got called a 'traditionalist' by the sales bod at Audi when I implied they weren't exactly what I would call progress.

Considering how prolific these things are becoming I have very little idea of what to replace my car with when the time comes.

Mr Red Barron

Original Poster:

1,568 posts

208 months

Monday 24th February 2014
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gottans said:
Hateful thing the electronic handbrake, got called a 'traditionalist' by the sales bod at Audi when I implied they weren't exactly what I would call progress.

Considering how prolific these things are becoming I have very little idea of what to replace my car with when the time comes.
Something without an electric handbrake!! That's what i'm planning to do. I have lost all faith with VW so am looking to go Japanese with the next car. An Outlander or something similar.

Had a phonecall from the garage and suprise suprise, the caliper is coroded on the inside and isn't repairable. Exactly the same thing that happened to the other side in Aug. So now i'm going to have a massive dent in my pocket near the £500 mark to repair. (sigh)

gregpot2000

233 posts

144 months

Thursday 13th March 2014
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As mentioned above, seems to be just Passats. I have one on my 2008 A4, and it's now done 124k without issues.
I love it to be honest, seems so much more refined than yanking hard on a great big stick everytime you stop. Auto release on every hill no matter how steep, just makes driving a breeze. It also means I can use my arm-rest all the time, on previous cars you could either access the handbrake or use the arm-rest, but never both!

Yeah, I know it equates to laziness mainly, and I coped fine before without it, but I wouldn't want to go back again now

Maracus

4,237 posts

168 months

Thursday 13th March 2014
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An indy I use says he only see Passats with the parking brake failure. He's not seen an A4 or A6 with a failure as of yet.

/touches a large piece of wood smile

blueg33

35,901 posts

224 months

Thursday 13th March 2014
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I have just replaced the A6 with something different, I really miss the electronic parking brake especially on the incline out of the station car park

Glosphil

4,355 posts

234 months

Friday 14th March 2014
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blueg33 said:
I have just replaced the A6 with something different, I really miss the electronic parking brake especially on the incline out of the station car park
I mean you miss the Hill-Hold. My car has a manual handbrake but also Hill-Hold. Take my foot off the brake pedal and the car won't roll back for about 2 seconds so I can pull away without using the handbrake.

blueg33

35,901 posts

224 months

Friday 14th March 2014
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Glosphil said:
I mean you miss the Hill-Hold. My car has a manual handbrake but also Hill-Hold. Take my foot off the brake pedal and the car won't roll back for about 2 seconds so I can pull away without using the handbrake.
Auto release was also handy at traffic lights, just push the right hand pedal and off you go

Chippo1

344 posts

123 months

Friday 14th March 2014
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Maybe ok for miss daisy drivers but it to slow to react for me and I beat the dam thing all the time and drive off with the brakes half on with a lurch .

It's a solution for limp wrists to a problem doesn't exist , there is no ability to moderate the operation of the handbrake , it's on , or it's off , and the way it goes on in my engineering brain Is bad , servo motors virtually going into stall and the brakes yanked on like it's the end of the world , the system just encourages pro driving technique in my opinion, and I can't see the brakes on my car lasting very well as I use the hand brake all of the time , I hate sitting foot on brakes and or clutch at lights etc . It's a time to relax and take stock . I just feel they won't last , I certainly wouldn't want a car that's got 50 or 60 k on the clock where the handbrake has been used properly , Likely to be wearing the system badly.

And of course the poor Audi warranty of only 60k will leave you holding the tab , where most manufacturers are now offeringing 100k warranties that in itself is a clear indication that Audi have no confidence in their products or quality

blueg33

35,901 posts

224 months

Friday 14th March 2014
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Chippo1 said:
Maybe ok for miss daisy drivers but it to slow to react for me and I beat the dam thing all the time and drive off with the brakes half on with a lurch .

It's a solution for limp wrists to a problem doesn't exist , there is no ability to moderate the operation of the handbrake , it's on , or it's off , and the way it goes on in my engineering brain Is bad , servo motors virtually going into stall and the brakes yanked on like it's the end of the world , the system just encourages pro driving technique in my opinion, and I can't see the brakes on my car lasting very well as I use the hand brake all of the time , I hate sitting foot on brakes and or clutch at lights etc . It's a time to relax and take stock . I just feel they won't last , I certainly wouldn't want a car that's got 50 or 60 k on the clock where the handbrake has been used properly , Likely to be wearing the system badly.

And of course the poor Audi warranty of only 60k will leave you holding the tab , where most manufacturers are now offeringing 100k warranties that in itself is a clear indication that Audi have no confidence in their products or quality
I am sorry, but this is just bks.

116k miles on mine and no issues whatsoever with the hand brake or brakes, plus everyone I know who has them has no issues. You get far more issues with a traditional handbrake with stretched cables, rusted cables, over centred cams etc

Problems with the servo etc etc, not really, aircraft brakes have worked in the same way for years

As for the warranty, Merc, BMW and Jag all offer warranties with pretty much the same terms as the Audi one.

Its fine not to like Audi's, but its dumb to talk rubbish

Chippo1

344 posts

123 months

Saturday 15th March 2014
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As are your comments , we are both basing our comments on research from samples of one , I qualified my comment saying it was a feeling

Maybe these other Marques also have poor warranties to , the norm in the industry is more like 100k with the Koreans leading the field , you can't offer such warranty unless the design and build is good and you are confident in the product and can afford to service the warranty , so I stand by my comments re Audi and my experience so far ! I have experienced warranties and the end results from other companies my experience tends to suggest a better service from others , again albeit from a sample of ONE

No comment about aircraft brakes I have no knowledge of them , there are comments here about the cost of failure of these components , and my only comment that I can substantiate is the reference to the lack of feel from the system and the drivers ability to moderate the operation of the braking system , fact! On conventional brakes I can say my experience of one car with Nissin brake components is that they suffer terribly from seizure and failure as result of corrosion but to date no handbrake failure as a result of cable failure at 14 years and 75k indeed when I recently stripped the lot the car were in fine condition and only needed some new lubrication.

No I am not an Audi acolyte , and for that matter an acolyte. Of any other marque , I like things to work as design and new design to be an improvement over the previous and personally I don't see these systems as an improvement at all

blueg33

35,901 posts

224 months

Saturday 15th March 2014
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The Korean cars have long warranties as a sales aid.

It would be interesting to hear from an Audi tech about the brakes. My sample is bigger than one its runs to about 8 smile

Jag XF has same handbrake (is that even the right term? it should be finger brake or parking brake), as does XK, F type etc, BMW also use them. If they were really that bad as a concept then PH would be full of complaints about them, but you just don't see many complaints TBH.

In fact I have just read (thanks to Google) that electro hydraulic parking brakes are used in more new cars than cable operated handbrakes.

There are many more problematic areas in modern cars than electro hydraulic parking brakes.

Chippo1

344 posts

123 months

Saturday 15th March 2014
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Blueg, I dare say the "parking brakes electronic" are here to stay and will become commonplace , the norm.

The bench mark for a mid size saloon as a drivers car BMW 3 series in its latest guise still has a manual parking brake!

I drove all day today in Central London, now here is a case in point when if I had a manual brake I would much of the time be just barely be using it to hold the car at lights etc I.e moderated in its operation , but of course the electronic brake was off or fully on . And on any number of occasions it's so slow to disengage that the brakes drag as one pulls away unless you virtually do a double shuffle with the clutch to allow the system to function in real time. It's to dams slow to react. Maybe it's the gear box ratio of 150/1 unwinding that is just slow , the box needs this huge mechanical advantage to allow the small servo motors to excert sufficient braking force on the pads.

The Koreans maybe do use the warranty as a marketing tool , but it costs money to do so , and I doubt they do this lightly, again look at the Warranty Direct results, J D Power , Auto car , all these surveys show Audi in a very poor light when stacked up against other Marques for both cost and number of breakdowns and overall reliability , Skoda do pretty well strangely. Maybe it's the complexity of the car that results in the Marques you mention not being able to offer leading warranties , of course Lexus do !

Last year when we had a problem at work with Citroen Van which I landed up taking into the dealer , which didn't need diagnostics to fix , failed windscreen washer pump .I was speaking to the dealer ship warranty clerk , sizeable dealership with an equally large Kia operation in the same building , his job for Citroen was a full 5 days a week , the guy who dealt with Kia fitted it in around other duties and spent about 1/2 hour a week doing it ! So sales aid, marketing tool or not their costs are significantly lower as a result of good build quality and reliability enabling them to offer long warranty.

Edited by Chippo1 on Saturday 15th March 20:05


Edited by Chippo1 on Saturday 15th March 20:07

Gordo997

133 posts

171 months

Sunday 20th April 2014
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EPB warning came on in our 08 Passat (39k mls) earlier today but still seems to be working properly. Had the switch replaced 18months ago but now worried it will stick on as others have experienced. Could it just be an incorrect warning?

warmfuzzies

3,984 posts

253 months

Monday 21st April 2014
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Chippo posts another Audi bashing thread, Yawn.....