Buckeye A4 3.2

My car has been held hostage by my dealer for 8 days now. Started with the infamous "2.7T shakes". Had the following corrective attempts made:
1. Dealer rebalanced wheels at around 10,000 miles
2. Dealer replaced rotors/brakes,rebalanced tires
3. Tire Store #1 rebalanced tires
4. Dealer rebalanced tires
5. Tire Store # 2 rebalanced tires. Tire Store # 2 convinced Conti to replace all four tires (shakes got worse)
7. Dealer determined 3 of 4 new tires were bad.
8. Dealer has held my car hostage for 8 days awaiting another set of new tires (upon my strong-arming to the service manager). Finally received an A-6 loaner --not as nice as my car -- after refusing to take another toyota death machine loaner.

For those of you offering drive shaft and other suggestions, I brought printouts of all posts on this site to show the potential range of "shakes" fixes to dealer.

Question is, have I been patient enough? Who do I appeal to now? How do I reach AoA reps that want to resolve this quickly? Like the rest of you on this site, I wear my Audi heart on my sleeve. They are testing my will and support. I just want my non-shaking car back to enjoy!

miamigrrl [midori]

or other as being the cause? They're just focusing on the tires? I don't see the reasoning, really. I've been (as I'm sure most of you have) through countless sets of tires over the years and have never had a vibration problem that wasn't resolved through simple balancing. Unless Continental has a very serious problem with their manufacturing, I really don't get why they'd so vehemently stick to the tires as the cause.

Call AoA client relations (800-822-2834) and open a case with them.. tell them your car is in there right now and all the relevant details. They're supposed to contact the service mgr about the issue. Holding it for 8 days for this issue is really unacceptable.

So the techs have actually driven the car to feel the vibes for themselves, right?

2.7tDallas

I had two bad tie rod ends - that fixed my vibration

Buckeye A4 3.2

Yes, took the shop foreman for a ride. He even noticed the shake a lower speeds. Thanks for the number. I will contact AoA Monday. I asked the service manager yet again if he is confident that the problem is the tires. He says he put the car on the rack and found 3 of 4 out of round. Implies Conti has some issues.

Thanks for the help! Hopefully a good report is coming next week.

Buckeye A4 3.2

How does one determine tie rods are bad?

drhaller

to find and fix my vibration issue. If the fix is not that the tires are out-of-round or a simple wheel balancing issue I will be back at the dealer and demand they investigate further.

If anyone is interested, I'm going to <a href="http://www.customalignment.com">Custom Alignment</a> in Mt. View, CA. The lead Porsche tech. at my dealer suggested I go to this place since they have done a good job race prepping cars and installing and corner-balancing many coil-over suspensions. They seem to have all the right <a href="http://www.customalignment.com/Equipment.htm">equipment</a>. I'll report what they find after the visit.

My car: 2001 A6 2.7T with 235/45R17 Dunlop 9000's on AT Italia S5's (17"x7.5" ET35) rims. Tires have less then 8,000 miles on them, been rotated twice and have worn evenly.

My symptoms: Significant vibrations on braking from 75mph. Vibrations at a steady cruising speed of 60-66mph.

Dealer said they checked the runout on all four rotors and found it was within "spec". I was told I had a tire that was "slightly" out-of-round (but not which one, sheesh!). I can't imagine that my vibration (especially the braking one) is caused by a slightly out-of-round tire. We'll see.

/dan

2.7tDallas

put the car in the air and shake the tire. Look for looseness in the upper tie rod ends. Same as it has been for 40 years

Definitely

So apparently there is a problem with the Continental tire. No such problem with my 255/40-17 Pirelli P6000's.

phred

But think first about what you want. "I just want it fixed" may not work, if the car really can't be fixed.

Do you want money (not likely)? Warranty extension? Credit towards another car? Tea and sympathy? A personally autographed picture of Randolph Mantooth(obscure reference)?

2.7tDallas

Johhny Gage!