Shipping Spacers

["Nicholas J. Yasillo" <n-yasillo@uchicago.edu>]

Here's something to check if your new Audi doesn't seem to ride "right".

After waiting the 19 weeks for a special order A4 2.8 Avant Q, my wife
finally took delivery 4 weeks ago.  She put about 1200 miles on during the
first month and loves the car, but complained that the ride was a lot
stiffer than she expected, even considering the car was ordered with the
sport suspension option.  Saturday (day before yesterday) she mentioned
that the car was intermittently making a "clunking" noise in the right
front when going over small bumps.  I jacked it up and removed the front
wheels to take a look and found some large broken chunks of red plastic
rattling around between the shock tube and the right front spring coils
(clearly causing the noise).

On the left side, there were two red plastic spacer discs above the
urathane bump stop on the front shock, and on the right side there was
still one disc and the remains of the disk that had broken.  These pieces
are plastic discs 32 mm thick and 60 mm in dia. with a slot that allows
them to be placed on the shock rod, but have no retaining clip, so can
easily fall off and get jammed into the spring.  These looked like
something that was not part of the suspension design (although they do have
a molded-in Audi part number), so I removed them all.  First thing this
morning I phoned the dealer and told the service manager about the problem.
He confirmed that these discs are shipping shims used during transport to
lock the suspension while the car is tied down.  Since they had obviously
missed removing the shipping shims while prepping the car, he tried to
explain the oversight by stating that some cars arrive with the shims, and
some do not.

It sure rides a lot better now, but I have to wonder if there are any other
A4's running around with their front suspensions as stiff as a buckboard!

--->Nick
Tinley Park, IL