A4q Corrective Maintenance

[LRGreger at aol.com]

I've recently been repairing a couple-of-years-neglect problems on my daughter's 1997 A4q (115K mi)(bad wheel bearing, nonfunctioning cruise control, broken catalytic converter, rusted lower door moldings, missing grill piece, missing headlamp washer cover, nonfunctioning remote locking/unlocking function, nonfunctioning headlamp washers, missing alternator air duct, front bumper lower portion catching on parking dividers and broken, missing front turn signal assembly).

She inherited the car from me two years and 20K miles ago, and has somehow managed to set a new record for miscellaneous car problems.  It doesn't help that she treats the car simply as transportation between the ski slopes in the winter and the mountain trails in the summer while bumming it in the Colorado ski-mountain town of Avon, and has had some parking lot bumper-car encounters.  Of course the age and mileage of the car are also factors.  

Armed with my Bentley's CD (I hate the CD compared to a hardcopy manual) and a lot of patience, I've managed to whittle the list of problems down to a remaining few.  Along the way, I learned that Bentley's doesn't properly instruct one about how to remove the track rod to wheel bearing connection that's necessary when replacing the rear wheel bearing.  (I eventually had to resort to a nut-splitter, because I hadn't adequately cleaned the bolt threads, which should have enabled me to remove the nut from the headless bolt without having to resort to the nut-splitter.)  I also came upon a somewhat neat solution to the problem of the lower bumper cover catching on parking dividers and pulling the bumper cover partially off/apart when backing off of the parking dividers.  (Use the center front drip shield fastener to fasten a make-shift support that holds the lower portion of the bumper cover up high enough that it doesn't catch upon backing off of parking dividers.  One has to redesign (cut) the drip shield slightly around the center fastener location.)

I still have to replace a faulty O2 sensor.  Hopefully this won't be too much of a problem.  A bigger problem (for me at least) seems to be reinstalling the sunroof cover (the one inside the car that manually slides to block the sun from overheating the car.  (Probably not a real problem in Colorado, but it is in So. Calif. where I reside.)  It slid totally out of place to the rear, then someone (?) pulled the headliner loose in the rear and removed the sunroof cover.  I'm told that the sunroof cover actually started the headliner disconnection at the rear window, and that the only solution was to completely unfasten the headliner and remove the sunroof cover.  Of course now the problem is reattaching the headliner.  Any suggestions on how to reattach the headliner at the rear would be appreciated.

One remaining headache is all of the low speed groaning and bumping noises coming from the front suspension (?).  Has anyone tackled this problem so they know what components need replacement?  The Audi garage claims they can fix the problem for about $1200, but I'd rather fix it for $120 myself.

TIA, and if anyone needs info. on fixing any of the above problems that I've already fixed, just let me know.  

Rob Greger