I'm sure most of you are familiar with my problem. If not, I'll summarize quickly. My car has had a vibration, mainly at highway speeds, since I bought it, however I didn't know how bad/abnormal it was until I had a lonaer from Audi (A3 & A4) that didn't do it at all. I've taken the car back to the Audi dealer twice and they weren't able to figure it out. The first time they thought the tires were out of balance...they balanced them and it was no better. The second time they found the two front tires were out of round due to excessive road force. They replaced the two front tires with two brand new ones and balanced them, as well as the rears again. That didn't fix the vibration either.

I've taken the car back for the third time. This time I went for a ride with the service manager to make sure he felt it. He did. I dropped it off at the Audi dealer on Monday morning. He assured me they would locate the problem, and look at more than just the tires. Anyway, it's now almost Friday and here's what they've told me. They found that 3 tires on the car were out of round, and out of balance, including the two new ones. I don't know how a thrid tire is out of round now...

Anyway...they think its the tires, so they are giving me 4 brand new tires of a different brand. I have Goodyear Eagles now, and they are putting on Michilens (not sure how to spell it)

I hope I just had bad tires, but I get the feeling...I could be wrong here...that some problem with the car, maybe a bent frame from being tied down improperly, is causing the tires to wear improperly...

Any Ideas?

 

Anybody?

 

Not sure if it would be the tires. Are they charging you for all this? That would really suck if they did.

josh

 

no charge at all.

 

Well thats good then!

Josh

 

well smile and enjoy the loaner

 

I know...but I want my car back and I don't want to have to keep going to the audi dealer every week. If my car isn't fixed when I go to get it on Saturday morning I'm going to stay at the dealership until I leave with a new car. I refuse to keep dealing with this on a car that only has 5500 miles on and has been driven perfectly since being bought.

 

Has anyone tried changing out the wheels as well as the tires? Maybe it's an issue with the wheels, not just tires - could be the wheels are out of round, not the tires. It's easy enough to bolt up a different set of wheels from another car and try them out...

 

From what they've said, the rims are fine. They've looked at the car for four days now. If that's the problem, I'll be very disappointed in them not checking that out. That would make sense though...rims could be flat in a spot or two.....

anything else it could be?

 

+1 on the wheels. I think it's a little unlikely that 5 basically brand new tires could be manufactured incorrectly. Maybe you should just stop doing hot-laps at your local speedway. Joking aside, have them put new wheels and tires on and see what comes from that. If they give you an issue with taking the next step, say things like "lemon" and "lawyer" and "reckoning".

DB