RE: Suspension work on a 4kq, What do you think?

["Iain Atkinson (ETL)" <iain.atkinson@etl.ericsson.se>]

Jeryd

If you are going to replace the shocks then you may as well do the top mounts at the same time, it all depends on what kind of budget you have and what you aim to achieve with the car. I recently didthis on my Coupe Q and went for OEM shocks and top mounts with new track road ends, A arm bushes and few roll bar bushes as well. The end result was my car now feels like new and handles just great, I didn't want to upgrade the shocks as I have a reasonable distance to work and back and use the car every day, stock for me is just fine thanks, others will have another opinion. I paid around £35.00 gbp per shock for the fronts. It's not a difficult job you just need to have all the right tools as the strut has to come off the car and be dismantled before you can insert the new shocks. Suggested tools are below:

1 Decant socket set (metric)

2 Ball joint/rod end splitter

3 Spring compressors

4 Hub puller to push the driveshaft out.

5 30mm socket and cracker bar to undo driveshaft nut

6 Torque wrench

7 Special VW / Audi tool to undo the nut in the middle of the top mount that is on the shock's piston

8 6mm or 7mm allen key to stop the shocks piston from turning whilst you undo the big nut (24mm I think) where the strut is attached to the body.

9 I used a 24mm cranked ring spanner in conjunction with the above.

10 Something to remove the steel threaded collar that holds the shock into the strut housing, some people have used pipe wrenches, I found these to be useless and bought an expensive big  pair of slip
joint pliers, mine was seized on real tight though.


As you can see this little lot adds up to a fair amount if you don't have it already, I hired the puller (bolts onto the hub using  the lug bolts) and spring compressors. As someone said to me you gotta have the right tools to do this job, if you got access to a bench and bench vise then great, don't do what I did and drop the complete strut assembly on your big toe, it f.......g hurts. As a thought whilst the strut is off the car how about replacing the wheel bearings as well. Overall though if you just replaced the shocks top mounts and A arm bushes you would see a big difference, oh don't forget an alignment afterwards.

HTH and good luck, any probs get back to me.

Iain

-----Original Message-----
From:	Jeryd [mailto:Leuck@concentric.net]
Sent:	13 October 1999 23:33
To:	quattro@audifans.com
Subject:	Suspension work on a 4kq, What do you think?

Hi.  My suspension in my 4kq is really week.  When I go around a turn it
feels like I am driving on 2 wheels (body lean).  I called up a Audi shop
and to get new shocks put in it is like 500$.  I can't afford this.  I
called a store and to get new shocks they are like 42$ apiece.  I am
thinking about doing the job my self.  Is it hard?  I looked in my book and
the job looked really easy.  Does anybody have any advice for me?  What else
is really cheep that I could install to make the suspension better?
Any help would be great!
Thanks
Jeryd
Ps-I am living in Santa Cruz, CA so if anybody is willing to teach me how to
do the job I would be very grateful!
Thanks again!
    1986 white Audi 4k cs quattro.