Articus

So I found that the front upper rear control arm bushing is completely separated/destroyed. This must be causing the braking vibration and the vibration at speed. I figure this must also be the knocking sound when rolling at lower speed. The control arm is hitting shocking housing because it's completely separated from the core.


Can this one be replaced without removing the shocking housing etc? I was thinking to just remove the pinch bolt.

S8ilver

audipages A8 Control Arm Replacement

Strut assembly doesn't need to come out.

nyrobbie77

you might be able to get the one control arm out without removing the strut, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier. There isn't much to removing the strut anyway.

Articus

So I set about getting this done today.

I see it's 100% neccesary to move the strut itself out of the way.

So the plan was to

1) undo strut mount at lwr control arm, undo 2 13mm nuts from engine bay.
2) drop the strut out
3) remove pinch bolt
4) replace the uppr rear control arm.


Well had trouble trying to manouver the shock out after undoing it's bolts, so moved on to the pinch bolt. The bolt didn't look rusty or corroded, but after trying to get it out, it was clearly seized. I don't have air tools and hesitant to apply an open flame given all of the penetrant i've been spraying.

So I intentionally snapped the head of the pinch bolt off. Then I used the nut on the other end to draw the pinch bolt through the knuckle, halfway there but it got dark, so will resume tomorrow. Can't wait to get this sorted.

Articus

Well, managed to complete this, it needed to be done because the inner metal just dropped out of the old control arm when I took apart,

but the knocking noise is still there!! and the vibration at 77-82 mph....

twentysevenlitres

Get it up on a hoist and check for play in all the control arms and tie rod ends with a pry bar. With one worn that badly, I'd be very suspect of the others.
Replace any arms with play in the ball joints.
Then have all 4 wheels balanced and aligned.

Articus

Yeah I suspect it's another one of the control arms or a bent wheel. Now that I've messed about with the suspension to replace the one control arm, I'm much more confident with tacking the rest of the arms.

The only thing that annoyed me was that it seemed like new oem pinch bolt and control arm bolts were just long enough. Hardly any thread showing out past the nuts. They were oem flanged locking nuts (distorted thread type locking nut). But I gave the guy my VIN, so not sure what that's about. The original bolts were definetely longer.

twentysevenlitres

The OEM brand of control arm is Lemfoerder. You can buy them cheaper than from Audi elsewhere. FCP sell a kit here (don't know if its cheaper than Audi or not, but they usually are), I would also try Easy Square (you'll probably need individual part numbers, but they're very competitive).
FCP Euro sell a bolt kit here. It's not genuine, but it's complete and high quality.

the_duke

+1 for FCP Euro. I buy almost all my parts there.

Articus

+2 on FCP euro. That's where I bought the lemfoerder rear arm. I've pretty much bought from them exclusively unless I was looking for OEM bolts. I think I'll just start buying FCP hardware kits now though. Can't beat lifetime warranty.