DenimAvant

I've had this loud groaning noise for a while that came from the steering whenever i did slow maneuvers while turning the wheel ie. parking. I finally had the time to take the car into the dealer and they were nice enough to put it up on the hoist for me when I arrived. The noise apparently was coming from low steering fluid. Bad news is that they found the steering rack to be leaking (2 month old car!) and it would have to be replaced. The part will have to come from Germany as they have no stock anywhere in North America. I don't even wanna know what that part would have cost if I had to replace it out of warranty. Anyways, it will be at least three weeks before the part arrives. As long as this gets rid of the noise, I'll be very happy.

One crappy thing that did happen was that the techs left some dirty fingerprints on the fabric A and B pillar liners. I was gonna head back to the dealer but I was running late for work. Fortunately, it comes off pretty easily with carpet spot remover. Just be generous with it and use a clean towel and water to wipe it down after applying it, careful to blot and not mash the dirt in further. Not too happy with the cleanliness levels in their shop. I've been in a MB dealership and their shop is spotless. Maybe it's just my dealer...I dunno.

Jimax

I've been having a groanig noise resonate throughout the steering rack and low speeds too. I've checked the fluid once and it was fine. Since I've heard others complain of the same noise, I just chocked it up to normal operation of the car.

My 10K service is coming up in about 1500 miles, I'll be sure to note it and have the dealer check it.

Chrisfast

Heard there were a lot of bad racks on the early production 1.8's, but not the 3.0. Hmmmmmm

macdracer

Was told it was the ac compressor making the noise on my 3.0...

Bob Petruska

It seems that any part that goes bad on our cars must be "ordered' from Germany! There should be a 100 steering racks in the US for immediate replacement, not wait a few weeks to get one. Quite a few people had fenderbender damage in the snow and are waiting weeks for hoods, fenders....from Germany! Washer pumps that go bad....need to wait for part from Germany! Bad stereos...NTWFPFG! Eveything is NTWFPFG!


There should be a law in the US that a car manufacturer must keep a US inventory of 100 cars worth of parts for the current model.


Just ranting as this shortage was the case with the Gen1 A4s and Audi assured everyone that it was fixed and you wouldn't need to wait more than a day or 2...yeah right!

Phil

I too have "parking" groans..dealer said it was the differential locking=normal ..I'm not satisfied.

DenimAvant

When I got to the dealer I was afraid they would just say that they took it out and tested it and they couldn't find anything. I was very surprised when they put it up on the hoist right away and was able to determine the problem.

I'm sure the steering rack can't be cheap so I can imagine why they wouldn't want to do it. hey don't want to go over their warranty "quota" I suppose. The rack takes a whole day to re & re so that would be like 500 bucks in labour just there. Not to mention the price of an Audi steering rack which, correct me if I'm wrong, would probably be several thousand dollars.

I'm just want this to be fixed now so it won't come and haunt me in the future. I noticed this noise practically when I picked up the car and I was just being lazy til now. This would mean that the car left the factory with a faulty rack. What kind of QA is that? The noise is definitely not normal PS strain. It is kind of high pitched and you can feel the vibration in the wheel. Loud too, as you can hear it inside the house!