I bought a 98 Quattro 5 speed this past spring for my wife. She pulled down our driveway to unload groceries and ended up parking with the right rear tire about 6 inches on the grass. We have maybe 1 or 2 inches of snow and the tire just sat there and spun when I tried to pull away. I was able to softly drop the clutch and "bark" the left rear tire for a split second before the right started spinning again. The front tires didn't seem to do anything the entire time. only the right rear was on grass/snow. The other three were on asphalt, no snow.

To add to this I changed the bearings on the right rear over the summer. I took the entire assembly to a machine shop to have the bearings pressed and after I was finished the ABS light came on. I think they damaged it at the shop.

My question is, if the ABS sensor was working would the quattro system act like that in that situation? Does one have anything to do with the other?

Thanks

 

it does sound like you have some sort of issue with the center diff not sending any power to the front wheels... weird indeed. As for the ABS light, there is a proximity sensor on the hub that will throw a code if not set to the proper distance. It can be bumped out of spec with something as simple as changing the brake pads. It's worth looking into to start.

 

Agreed^^^ Check the diff. Also how is the fluid level? Not sure if it the manual Quattro would be affected by low fluid as the autos would. Also not trying to be smart or rude...but is there even axles in the front? When I got my Quattro years ago, I came across two that was converted to rear only. One for street racing purpose and other we have no clue why..lol

https://www.audiforums.com/forum/aud...orking-190191/

granted its not an A4 but interesting...

 

bradtyler02-
So the sensor throwing an error has nothing to do with the quattro? I wanna say I read somewhere that quattro used breaks to distribute torque or something along those lines?

DocT-
I read over that post earlier. Is there an easy way to check if the axles are there? Could I just jack the front and see if it turns freely?

 

The torsen diff isn't perfect, if one wheel has zero traction it'll act like an open diff, which is what you saw. That's why 01+ cars had ASR to feather the brakes on wheels that are spinning. Nothing to worry about, it's perfectly normal. If there was an issue with the torsen it would be blatantly obvious.

 

You don't even have to lift it to look. Turn the wheel hard right or left and put your head down there and look. You should be able to see the axle going into the knuckle. Also it should turn free ish. But if you jack it up and turn either wheel and the axle doesn't rotate, but the wheel does, your having some serious cv joint failure. To check that make sure you have both fronts off the ground. I am not sure if it will spin with only one off(never tried it that way). Also look at your tires...are all of them the same size/brand/tread etc? That will affect the quattros seriously if that is not the same when it comes to traction. I am no mechanic at all, but hope that helps some.

 

Mad Cow-
Is ASR an upgrade to EDL? I found this online but I'm afraid I may be confused.
When you say Torsen Diff would that be similar in function to transfer case on a 4x4 truck? And the Open Diff is similar to the front and rear gearbox/pumpkin/chunk?

 

I think EDL is a sub-feature of ASR or something, either way we didn't get it until '00 or '01. A torsen diff is basically an open diff on steroids, it can transfer way more power to one side, but if one side has no traction it becomes an open diff and sends all the power to that side. So say if your rear right wheel is slipping, the rear diff will send all the power to the right and the torsen will send all the power to the rear. If you get into a situation like this just feather the brake a bit to even out the power distribution.

 

Mad Cow, that was my understanding as well. But after doing some searching even walky believes that the earlier B5s have EDL as well. Check out this thread, specifically post 8.

quattro in snow

 

Weird, I've never experienced any sort of brake feathering even when taking off from a dead stop in snow. But then again I did replace my ABS unit with one from an unknown year B5 without bothering to recode, so that might have something to do with it.