LJH

My Dad has his '04 A8L in the dealer for an issue with the front suspension. Last week the front suspension would not pump up and his indy said that he was not comfortable working on it and suggested taking the car to the dealer. Get this, the dealer is saying that the front airbags need to be replaced and the job is going to run around $5000.00, $4000.00 for parts and a grand to install them. I searched all the Audi forums as well as google and actually did not come up with much in the way of info. Wondering if any of you have been down this road before, after market airbags (I found a bunch of info for the Allroad but not the A8)?, coilover conversion? That is crazy money and there has to be a better way.

Cheers,
Jim

fusilier

2004 w/ Airbags is a D3 A8, not a D2. However, the Airbags on the A8s have dust covers so they're more resilient than the ones on the Allroad which do not have dustcovers and fail badly costing about that much.

I used to have a 2004 A8L til it was destroyed by a hailstorm. The buyback on the whole car was 8000 dollars.. Running Engine included and working airbags!

BTW, say you were to try to fix this yourself. You must have a Hex+CAN Vagcom cable ($350) to talk to the cars computer. And probably quite a few special audi tools. Aside from that, try to find the cheapest parts.

Good luck.

tozoM8

Replacing it is easy just put the car in lift/service mode so it is not running the compressor.