Front end vibrations
 

2011 Audi A6 3.0T Quattro
To be clear, I just purchased the Audi. It has 80K miles on it and I have had a few too many beers.

I am getting vibrations at speeds 45+ MPH. When driving straight, there is a slight pulsating vibration seemingly coming from the front drivers side. When I round a corner to the left, the frequency of the pulsating vibration increases. When I round a corner to the right, the frequency of the pulsating vibration slows way down or stops.

So far I have replaced all four tires (balancing included) and replaced two bent rims, had two alignments, jacked the car up and tried to wiggle the wheels in and out to see if the wheel bearings are bad... and they don't seem to be.

I have found this issue on a couple of other threads but they led to no avail.

I need help brothas and sistas. Give me some ideas. Tomorrow I plan to remove the from wheel bearings and use an engineering stethoscope to see if they are the culprit. Then slide the CV boots back and check for grease and play in the joint and finally check the oil level in the front diff, if I can.... I am not sure if it is possible on this car... prior jeep dude....

I would revisit the possibility of a bent rim. Just because you had them fixed doesn't mean they did a good enough job.

You've got a C6. This is the C7 forum. Maybe there's a specific issue with that series, so It may be a good idea to post there.

C6 or C7, the symptoms are similar to a bad right front wheel bearing. I check wheel bearing by raising the wheel and spinning it while holding onto the knuckle or spring. If the bearing is bad, you can feel the balls crunching in the bearing race. I never had much luck with the up/down side to side method.

If your 2011 A6 is in the USA, it's a C6. The rest of the world had the C7's in 2011.

It was the front left wheel bearing. I couldn't tell it was bad until it was removed. I went ahead and replaced both passenger and drivers side wheel bearings and also replaced the axle shafts while everything was apart. Sorry about using the wrong forum and thanks for the replies. Cheers.

Thanks for the update.

Audi's still use wheel bearings??? That's so old school. Huh, go figure. Guess there is still some old-school tech that is never-changing. And here I thought it was some kind of magnetic hoovering spindle device powered by a flux capacitor since everything on our cars seems to have a controller that makes our cars so misterious and high-tech/high maintenance. hhmmm. But still loving the car! :cool:

Yes thank you for sharing final discovery and helping rest of us find quicker solutions to our shared potential maintenance issues. Many Thanks. :)

Now I have to look into how to replace wheel bearings. ugghh. grumble grumble. ;)

LOL replacing wheel bearings is easy, just did 2. First one took me about 8 hours - was afraid of damaging things. On the second side things hammers were flying and was done in an hour :)
Afterall, all you have to remove is - 5 wheel bolts, 2 caliper bolts, 1 rotor bolt, 4 bearing bolts and 1 axle bolt (CAUTION!!! when you remove axle bolt, axle grease will leak. Keep axle bolt in at all times)

Here is how I did it