VAMike

My Audi is a 2003 A6 4.2, Sport package, with about 97,000 miles.

Ride had been declining steadily since I got the car used with about 30,000 at the end of 2006. At that time, when the road was decent/good quality, the car's ride was outstanding at highway speeds (faster the better actually) and still quite good around town. After a year or two, things gradually started feeling looser and much rougher at the same time. Just bad. Never noticed any 'event' that might have caused it; it was a gradual thing.

Last fall, I had the complete Febi-Bilstein/Stern control arm and TRE kit installed. At that time I asked them to check wheel bearings and tell me how they looked - was told they looked fine. A couple of weeks ago, I finally went ahead and had replacement shocks installed: Koni FSDs. The reason I got the FSDs was that after researching on here and elsewhere, I felt like they would give me a great combo of good ride quality along with improved handling.

RE: ride quality, I was sort of expecting the Konis to bring back the 'old days', but now that they're on, the ride still feels too rough to me. Most disconcertingly, even on road surfaces that are good or even *smooth*, I am still getting feedback that feels like light 'jitter' for lack of a better term, although I do concede that the Konis are doing a somewhat better job absorbing energy from the bumps and potholes. Just not as good as I was expecting, and not as good as I recall when first owned the car.

So I'm left with a couple of possibilities:

1) The Koni FSDs, though good for around-town driving, are still somewhat firmer overall than the stock Audi shocks that come with the 4.2 sport package A6. Also, shocks may take a few hundred miles to break in (?) so I may be speaking too soon. Like I said, I certainly believe they are an improvement over what I *was* driving (7-year old stock shocks) but they do not have me in a state of nirvana similar to what I knew in the first year or two of owning this car. In any event, this might have just been my mistake, thinking that the FSDs would yield a ride that *to me* was as good or better than the stock shocks were in their younger days.

2) Second possibility is that there are still other things to upgrade/replace (spend money on!) to bring my car back up to snuff.... Quick aside - I am getting the left-front strut mount fixed this week because the tech that did the shock installation noticed it was really worn. (They could not get the part that day so I just told them to finish up and I would get it fixed soon.) Is this a possible contributor to rough ride? Or is a worn/bad strut mount a binary type of failure that only causes a noticable problem when it actually fails/breaks? If I had all new strut mounts installed, would this have any chance of improving the ride?
Or maybe there are some other aspects to the suspension that I'm not aware of which need to be addressed? (This would not be a shocker.)

The handling and agility is definitely improved with the new Konis, but I still feel like there is a lot being left on the table re: ride quality. If anyone can help me build a checklist of items to look into so that the ride quality can be the best it can possibly be for my 7-year-old / 97K miles car, I would really appreciate it.

Just Me

did you replace the strut top mounts? You seem to have replaced everything else.

I cant say what shock is firmer than what. But bear with me. Your ride got - in your words - "rougher" as the old shocks deteriorated. Unless they seize, that means "become more soft, and probably badly nonlinear" to me.

Logic suggests then, that you were under-damped and the suspension oscillating. Only a much firmer shock would fix that. You opted for a softer one.

I'm not at all convinced that this is the answer. Your description of the "rough ride" si far too vague. But i'm pointing out a logical inconsistency in your argument.

G