[A4] To change or Not to change all four tires

[Sean Reifschneider]

On Tue, Jun 20, 2006 at 11:47:11PM +0000, Venkat Venkataratnam wrote:
>I have '98 A4 2.8 Quattro. I just had a flat on one of my tires (rear one) 
>on the side wall. Should I change just the two rear ones or all the four? 
>The rear two might have lasted just couple of more months.

I called Audi about our '97 A4 2.8Q probably 5 years ago to verify my
understanding about this.  We had a flat on a trip, 700 miles from home, 50
miles from nowhere, and the guy at the Nowhere Tire Shoppe recommended
replacement of all 4 tires because "different size tires can lead to
different rotational speeds of the 4 tires, leading to premature wear of
the differential."

I called him on bullshit, because, you know, the differentials are in there
because the tires often aren't going the same speeds...  There's probably
some exact steering position you can use which causes them to pretty much
all rotate the same speed (though I'd expect alignment differences between
the front and back would happen anyway).

Well, to cut to the chase, as it were, the Audi "technical support line" or
whatever it was I called (AoA, anyway) said "Nah, you're fine".  I was
planning on replacing all 4 tires soon anyway, and the Nowhere Tire Shoppe
didn't have the T/A VR4s I really wanted to put on there, so I really
didn't want to get more than just one to get me home.

Thanks,
Sean
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Sean Reifschneider, Member of Technical Staff <jafo at tummy.com>
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