[Biturbos4] Squeaky front control arms

[Igor Kessel]

Folks,
I have just installed grease fittings in the notoriously squeaky lower 
control arms in my wife's car. I used the M6x1mm, 90° grease fittings 
from McMaster (1105K76). They come in a package of 10.

The cap's thickness of the rear arm was 6.5mm, of the front one was 
7.5mm. The grease fitting thread was 6.5mm long so in the first case I 
used a small metal washer to provide some extra clearance between the 
threaded portion and the ball. I also put the Red Loctite on the thread. 
It's the one that provides a permanent seal.

The rear arm allows for drilling straight up. The front one is upside 
down, so I elected to drill into it at a slight angle as to clear the 
hub housing. I was successful in doing so w/o having to remove the 
control arm from the car, thus I didn't need to do the alignment afterwards.

I used the bottoming M6 tap #3 since there is not much thickness in the 
Aluminium material, and I didn't want to drill into the ball itself to 
provide the extra depth for a regular pointy tap.

So far so good. It sure beats replacing the 4 lower control arms to the 
tune of $300/ea and doing a $125 alignment after that.

FYI folks, Pep Boys sells 90° grease fittings with the 0.25" thread. I 
am not sure about the pitch, but given the choice I would recommend the 
finer  one.
I didn't buy those fittings and chose the metric ones from McMaster 
instead because I hardly have any non-metric tools in my garage, much 
less non-metric taps and dies.

I am CC:ing the biturbo list coz both the B5 S4 and the B5 A6/Allroad 
cars have the same multi-link suspension.

-- 
Igor Kessel
two turbo quattros in the stable,
the third one is in the works