[Biturbos4] Neuspeed 22mm rear bar bushings?

[Russell Romano]

Consider ourselves lucky?  I would agree that the Audi suspensions are a mechanical marvel, but I would not consider myself lucky that Audi has decided to build the front end of our cars our of eight individual control arms, each with non-replaceable bearings.  On top of that the control arms are notoriously short lived.  In my old A4 they started creaking with only 50k miles on the car.  Not bad for a $50 ball joint.... Ridiculous for 1 out of 8 control arms!

A properly engineered product doesn't take $1500+ in parts and hours of labor to repair at 50k miles.

I take this as a trade off for the handling characteristics that are unique to Audi.  I enjoy the cars so I tolerate the reliability... But I won't own one without a comprehensive warranty to cover such situations.  I'd like to see that improve so I don't have to be afraid to own one past my warranty.

-Russ





-----Original Message-----
From: Keman [mailto:keman at interwolf.net]
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 7:18 PM
To: Igor Kessel; Quincy Chiang
Cc: biturbos4 at audifans.com
Subject: Re: [Biturbos4] Neuspeed 22mm rear bar bushings?

<snip>

Really, we should consider ourselves lucky. An S4 has only a couple
bushings. The rest are all heim (ball) joints. They wear out, surprisingly,
just like bushings do. But they are much easier to replace and perform at
100% up to the point where they loosen up and rattle to hell before you take
the control arm off and pitch it into the dumpster.

Audi suspension still blows my mind. It's neat stuff.

<snip>