04audiguy

I have an 04, Quattro, 6 spd, w/ 96,000 mi. I have seen other threads saying the same thing but no one has had an answer.
It started making a whining noise that seems to be coming from the Rt. front.
Defantly speed related,gets louder as speed increases but stays the same if you shift into neutral and gets louder and higher pitch going down hill in neutral.
Any ideas??

lyleswk

Wheel bearing?

jseklund

+1

Second guess would be to rotate your tires and see if that makes a difference...may try this first because of the lower cost if this is the issue, but I suspect the bearing.

Prospeeder

Wheel bearing, super common on A4s for some reason. i do them often.

malmc02

I have a similar noise that is directly related to the speed at which the wheels are spinning. Doesn't matter if I'm in neutral, in gear, or up on a lift - my issue is a bearing in the tranny. Hopefully your issue is not quite as nasty...2003 A4 1.8, 120k miles.

04audiguy

I'm hoping it's not the tranny. It dose seem to be coming from the front so if I'm lucky it will be a wheel bearing.

tjordan

I have an 05 A4 1.8TMQ and it sounds very similar to the problem I had about 2 years ago. If it was a wheel bearing it would get louder when you turn the wheel and put a load on the wheel with the bad bearing. Mine ended up being a bearing in the transmission. Every shop I took it to claimed it was a wheel bearing until I called a local manual transmission guru and explained my symptoms, which were just like yours and he immediately said it was a bearing in the transmission. The tranny does not need a complete rebuild to fix the problem, which is what everyone else insisted and most tranny shops don't work on manual transmissions, they send them elswhere. I've been a backyard mechanic since I was 15 and have done all the maintenance on my cars so I decided to pull the tranny and take it him to be fixed. I found a DIY writeup online. It's not an easy job but can be done if you have some skill, time and patience. It cost me about $1500 do do it myself which included the tranny teardown, new OEM bearing, reassembly, 3qts Motul 300 Gear Oil, new OEM flywheel, new bolt kit, new OEM clutch & throwout bearing, new 034 street density motor & tranny mounts and new APR engine snub mount.