im having a problem with my audi its a 1996 audi a4 2.8 fwd and im not sure if it is the control arms or what it might be, but i thought i would try and get a consensus of what it might be so when im at school monday i can throw it up on one of the lifts and hopefully get it taken care of. Anyhow what is happening is when i brake i feel what appears to be suspension movement or something of that affect like the front left of the vehicle plows a little bit, then when i come to a stop i let off the brake and hear a loud clunk and the bind lets off, the suspension does also creek quite a bit when driving, lots of high pitched squeeks coming from the front end. I had audi dealership look at the car like 4 months ago because it was kinda starting to do the problem then and they told me the control arms were a little worn but not bad. If it is the control arms, is it the bushings that commonly causes the problem or the balljoints? thanks for the help guys.

 

sounds like a control arm issue. it is not to dangerous to drive on for a short while just gets worse over time. my susjestion go to ecs and get ther upgraded kit and heavy duty tie rod ends. it might be a little expensive to replace them all at once but once one fails they all start to go. it is more expensive to do them when just one or two are needed cause labor costs are going to add up fast

 

is it the bushings of ball joints that commonly go bad? I have found a website that sells the bushings themselves and is considerbly less then what it would cost for a full control arm kit. and are the ball joints serviceable on the control arms, from what ive found it dosent look like they are as i havnt seen a website that sells just balljoints.

 

sorry you have to buy the whole arm these are non replaceable bushings. yes it is very common every audi has had this prob from 96 -02 audi just put out a recall on the top front ones. call a dealer and see what they can do first for free. if they dont fix it find a local shop and buy the kit from ecs

 

dont need a shop to do it, im sure i can more than handle it all myself, just 600 bux is hard to stomach for a student, I am a student at UTI in cali for automotive technology so doing the work at school is no prob, just getting the 600 bux for the arms is the problem,
http://www.stopshopanddrive.com/epcv...opshopanddrive


this is where i found the bushings and they list one for the upper arms, is this incorrect?

 

i have not seen any one replace just the bushings but with the cheep price you can try.
this part on the arms als goes bad to
wich is why i belive you have to replace with a whole new arm.
since you are doing the labor you can just replace the bad arms and when you get more money replace the other ones.

 

Aren't the ball joints & control arms one whole piece.

 

yea the balljoints and control arm are 1 piece, but the bushing is replaceable, i looked up the procedure in alldata at school today, however i think im going to get new upper arms and tie rods, just trying to get a price on em through some diffrent part hookups i have, had the car up on the lift today and finall got in there to see whats going on and there is a few issues, 1st being the the rear upper contol arm bushing is completley tore out and that arm has a buttload of play on it, the others have cracked bushings that dont look so great, so anyhow i popped the control arms out to check out the ball joint ends and the lower control arms arnt really bad but the top have alot of play and the tie-rods really dont seem that bad but considering that is an relatively inexpensive item and its so crucial to saftey of vehicle i figure if the upper control arms have pist ball-joints im not gonna wait for the tie-rods to be the same way, next issue was the inner boot of that axle has a tear in it, looks very recent, i have reciept for that axle being replaced in may about a month before i bought the car and then i did the other side but i figure ill just buy another axle as i have a pretty good hookup for the parts, my last axle i bought cost me 35.00 and that was at cost from the parts warehouse. so im hoping with getting price for all this stuff at cost from my parts hookup it wont be too bad but well see how that works out.