Panelhead

Finally got a chance to drop my car off at the front end shop. Upper control arm bushings, anti-sway bars links, and pads and rotors.
It will not be finished until in the morning, they wanted to recheck the alignment and there are many ahead for that.
I only looked at the pads, rotors, and front links. But the rubber on the links and the rotors were shot. This is on a 2005 with 72,000 miles. They said the rear links looked bad as the front.
They were still finishing the brakes and had not replaced the bushings. Said they were deteriorated also.
The car felt tight, aligned fine, and made no noises. So they have to be really gone before the issues will get your attention.
If you have original bushings and links on your early D3, replace them. Do wait until you ruin a pair of tires to replace. I think I could have been this in three hours. Pulling the wheels and replacing is the hardest part.

Mike141

+1, I ruined a set of tires on my last D3 due to spent upper control arm bushings and that was an 05 with about 95K when I changed them.

that_tg

I ruined a set of front tires and thought it was the alinement. The shop that did the alinement (as to not ruin the new set of tires) said it was not the alinement and that the arms seemed good. Any ideas? Is it the arms and they can just not tell?

The tires had bad wear on the outer edge. New tires to crap in 10,000 miles.

Thanks

MP4.2+6.0

Almost invariably on D3's it is the front upper inner control arm bushings. But if you don't know the part or Audis generally, you might not always recognize the wear. Some of the cracking they develop can be mistaken for the partially open rubber molding they use since the bushing has to flex in multiple directions because of the suspension design.

Net, as you can read into replies so far, beyond 50K I would be looking at it carefully, and probably by 60-90K they are commonly worn to where they can damage tires in well under 10K miles. To get a clear view of it, you often have to have the wheel off to really be able to inspect it well. My last two Audis (the D3 and my prior C5) both had the upper control arms (and lower sway bar links) replaced for the first round inside of their roughly 75K of relevant extended warranties. I did the C5 a third time at 140K miles after the junk Meyle suspension parts from Blau's kit failed in short order and burned up a set of tires in front; fortunately those tires were already getting on in years.

Mike141

It's the rubber bushings that go bad in the upper control arms. Put it in lift mode and shine a light up where the arms bolt to the car up in fender well, if they are bad you will see the rubber is all torn and ripped. My tires were worn in inner part and they were worn unevenly causing excessive road noise.

Panelhead

Those bushings can look good from peeking in and yet are worn. I looked at mine while they were finishing the brakes yesterday. Did not crawl into the wheel well to see closely, but still looked okay. The guy doing the brakes said he could see they were shot. But he fit in there better, maybe a 36 jacket to my 46. Plus younger eyes.
BTW, are the parts Lemforder or Lemfoerder? Received parts that came in boxes labeled both ways. There are not buttons on my phone for putting the punctuation above the O.