Rudolf von K.

About the infamous failure of front control arm bushings on many, many A4's, the French magazine L'Automobile had a report in its June 1999 issue. I translate it below. (I know the translation is rough, but both my French and my English are defective, I'm afraid.) One hopes that before long Audi will come to its senses and recognize that it should participate in the cost of replacing defection control arms of out warantee.

The piece in L'Automobile begins with a letter from an unhappy owner of an A4 with noisy control arm bushings. It then goes on:

Audi's point of view:
This phenomenon is connected with the production parameters of the front control arms, which can occasionally generate noises. From June 1996, the in-plant manufacturing was optimized and the use of a new grease on all the front suspension arms was generalized. Only corrected parts are available as spares. On all the later A4's, the suspension arms benefit from a rethought design.

The point of view of L'Automobile:
These noises from the front suspension appear frequently in the A4's between 80 000 and 120 000 km. The models of the first few years (95-96) are the most sensitive. In the 1995 models, these faults are attributable to the anti-roll bar, and can manifest themselves at 20 000 to 30 000 km. From March 1995, the bushings of the anti-roll bar were improved. In the 1995-96 models, other noises suddenly crop up later, around 80 000 to 120 000 km; they are due to the control arms. The improvement of June 1996 which employs a new grease has not totally resolved this phenomenon. On these models, the sole remedy consists of changing the relevant suspension arms. An operation which can run more than 3 500 francs. Audi is not offering to cover any of the cost.

Philip

Thanks for your post. Your English is quite good; suspect your French is quite good as well.

enoughalready

and wrote to Audi of America. My second right lower control arm lasted six weeks!!! When I asked this question before, nobody replied. At the risk of getting severly flamed (and provoking some people to take some action), I GUESS THAT MOST OF THE FORUM PARTICIPANTS ARE MORE CONCERNED ABOUT WHAT FLAVOR OF WAX TO USE THAN A POTENTIAL BIG REPAIR BILL!!

antony

It's an International issue, so all owners worldwide with problems should petition AUDI, right?

A. Udi

Wax flavor? You forgot chrome tips, look-at-me rims, boinkier springs and Rev-o-rama ECUs

Andy Hedin

...from what I've read it's not a safety issue, just a major nuisance, so I doubt that NHTSA will do anything about it. Personally, I've got 45,000 miles on my '97 1.8Tqms and I'm still on the original control arms with barely a chirp/squeak out of them.

I agree that Audi should do something about this. I am a bit worried that mine will fail out of warranty. If I end up having big repair bills out of warranty...bye bye to my A4.

Andy Hedin

unknown

Hello there:
i can,t tell you my name but when i read your article it came to my attencion when you mention that probably audi is waiting until your car goes out of warranty.
Let me tell you you,re not far from correct
I tell you why e-mailme so i can tell you lot more you,ll be terrified of the way audi works
i got a 98 a6 quattro wich has been at the dealer every other week not because any major problem but the way they handle customer complaints those guys at my dealer are extremelly friendly but they can,t get anything done until audi gives the aproval (good luck to get to talk to audi)
even for a small probem like my window making noise whe rolling up or down they told me they were going to talk to the DSM about it
DSM? what,s that they say he,s the guy who makes the decisions , so we set an appointment with him
so i came back next week and after i had to live with that noise this guy jump with me in the car and roll the window down and told (the stupid brainless a****le) this is normal
He didn,t even bother to roll the window up to check up and down I felt like kicking the daylights out of his eyes
while i was waiting for him at the dealer (because this idiot said i,ll be there at 9:00 am and didn,t show until 11:37 am) iwas talking to other customers and they were telling me they had many days waiting for an answer to get their car fix.
To avoid an argument i left the place and call the service manager to appologize for that because he has been extremelly nice and honest two days later I went to another dealer to get it fix they told me i could wait for the car like an hour so i wait because i had to go on a trip and the window didn,t roll down anymore.
They fix it very fast i was very happy about it
I ask the service manager if the technician could take the car for a drive to locate a noise in the steering specially in the morning
The guy told me he noticed my steering was the noise while he worked on the window
I ask him what should I do about it? he told me he added fluid but there was a leak in the system
i ask them to fix it because I was going to a trip with my family.
The story start again they had to get approval from audi , I call the other dealer to ask them about it , they told me they had add fluid two times before,
I said what? you guys knew am having a problem in my car and never fix it.
The manager told me they can,t do anything until you complaint about it
so if i keep bringing the car for servive and you guys keep adding fluid i would never know
i hang up and went to the technician and ask him if was safe to go on a trip? he told me he was not allow to talk to customers , so the manager came and he told him it was ok to talk to me
I ask him why all this things take such a pain to get them done specially when they know the problem is there
The guy told me that to get something fix it had to be safety related and ready to breack
how i supposed to know i told him I always had bmws in the past and never had to get thru this to get something done , even when my 740 needed a transmission i took my car to the dealer on monday at about 12:30 am and the car was ready on tuesday afternoon plus they gave me a list of other items they repair while my car was there and they offer me a car to drive while they work on mine
Am very happy i leased this a6 because as soon as the lease is over i will be at the bmw dealer again where they know how to take care of the customers without all that pain and that idiot guy from audi (DSM) can shove his audi up his ***
thank you for reading this it makes me feel a lot better to share this anger

bye