Avanthead

or over uneven surfaces and road patches. Shop put the car on the rack and checked for play but did not detect any. Inspected shocks and replaced both front inserts. Tires are dunlop sport 5000's, 225/50/16. Worst case is when traveling over RR tracks, you can feel vibration through the steering wheel but no noises of any kind. Front end wanders over uneven surfaces or patched pavement. Tracks straight as an arrow on the highway at all speeds.

Kneale Brownson

Probably because of the oversized tire width. Audi put 215s on the cars originally.

rmccomiskie

Toe out on my 200 caused similar symptoms.

ColoQuattro

by pushing up and down on each of the car's corners. More than one and one-half rebounds usually is a sign of bad strut dampeners. The dampeners are not keeping the wheels on the road hence the vibration over tracks and bumps. The car cannot keep the suspension under control with bad shocks. The car will feel unstable in cornering through the steering wheel and will allow the suspension geometry to flop all over the place causing a darty feeling on straight roads as well. The suspension will feel loose and make all sorts of noise depending upon wear level. Your tires will wear out in no time. My Daughter's Taraus had bad struts and schredded a nice set of Michellin's in 15K miles.

The other possibility is the alignment if your steering is leading in the traffic wheel rutts. Typically oversized (wide) tires can cause a bit if this which is acceptable to a point but this becomes an issue only when you get into the 245mm and 255mm sizes. Your camber adjustment can be tweaked to a bit more neutral if you have a performance alignment, (lots of negative camber)this bothers you. The wheels will follow the rutts and cause a darty feeling when you drift from side to side in your lane. If the alignment rack is off and there is too much positive camber the car will be darty also but with much less control. Ask when your shop last calibrated their alignment rack. But this is not usually the cause of a vibrating wheel over bumps.

Finally There is a process for taking up limited slack in the rack & pinoin steering rack in Bentley's if it is kind of a sharp slap you feel in the steering wheel it may also be play in your steering rack. There is an adjusting screw and procedure for this, but you have to be careful that this is, in fact, the issue as overtightening will wear the rack assembley prematurely and cause a loss of on-center stability and a loss of steering return to on-center after a turn----basically the procedure is outlined in section 48.19/Vol 2 ...2 mechanics (one to turn the wheel and one to listen), wheels striaght, engine off.....* "move steering wheel back and forth approximately 30 (deg) fromn center position and listen for popping noises from the steering gear"......if you have popping noises in the rack it may be out of adjustment and have excessive play.

I'm No Pro

Are these also called bump stops?

Kneale Brownson

Re: Is there another term for strut dampers? = Shock Absorbers?

ColoQuattro

I saw that you replaced the fronts but not the rears. This could cause a loose feeling situation depending upon the wear level of the shocks. Again my daughter's car had totally bad shocks on the right side but not the left. generally suspension rebound was not bad so I thought that the shocks (dampeners) were old but OK. When I finally noticed the tires were about shot I changed out the shocks. The right side front and rear shocks had absolutly no pressure left in them and the shafts sank into the cylinders under gravity. The left side front and rears were still providing some dampening and were still difficult to compress. This condition still dramatically effected the way the car drove and wore tires. It may not be the issue with yours but I usually change all four shocks since they all see the same mileage and conditions. You also may have a borderline bad tie rod end or a steering dampener that is borderline. Hope that this helps.