UrS4boy

Tramlining is when your car follows the ruts in the pavement or concrete with no input from you. As a result, the car seems to dart from side to side a bit and the steering wheel moves in your hand. Tramlining can be caused by poor alignment (e.g too much too out (or in)), incorrect tire pressure(s), tire design (some tires tramline more than others), tire width (wider seems to be worse), bad tie rod ends, etc.

My car (93 S4 with 191,000 km) has been pretty good for not tramlining for the 8 years I have had it. A while ago, I did get tramlining with some Toyo Proxes T1's but I never had any with either my winter tires (Pirelli Wintersport 210s) or in the past two years with my Falken Avenus (sp) summer tires.

However, in the last month or so, I was noticing a looseness in the steering and quite a bit of tramling. This became more evident on a recent trip from Vancouver BC to Walla Walla WA for a wine tasting long weekend via I-5, I-90 and I-82. These roads get a lot of semi-truck and trailer traffic and the right hand lane(s) are quite rutted from the weight of the trucks.

I was kicking myself in the middle of a sleepless night in Walla Walla for not checking my steering rack or ball joints etc before I set out on this 1400 km round trip. Monday morning, while the car was still cool, I checked the steering rack for tightness and lack of cracks on the mounts (everything seemed fine). Then I checked the steering damper.

WTF?!! The bolt holding the passenger side down was loose and the end of the damper could be moved up and down about 3/16". Hmm... I whacked the end of the damper down with my hand and tightened up the bolt.

The drive home was much better. Almost no tramlining. When I did get some, the road was very rutted pavement (as opposed to concrete).

On the basis of this experience, you might want to check the tightness of your steering damper - just on general principles but especially if you have a tramlining problem. Personally, I am finally going to replace my steering damper with the one I bought 2 years ago (the expensive one, not the MUCH cheaper Fox damper - which works just as well). I don't expect any (or much) more improvement. Just a peace of mind that I have the stupid bolts tight (again). D'oh!!!

HTH.

S4-Fireblade

Mine is starting to leak and I know a company back here that rebuilds the all steering rack for cheap and with a one year warranty included, the problem is that I need to stop the car for about 1 month...
Is it possible for you to send me your old one, so that I send it instead of mine?

UrS4boy

Shipping a used S-car damper will be more than a new Fox damper.

S4-Fireblade

Anyway it's a good iddea to check the damper "wealth"- I feel some trumbling too.

furtherrad

VW Fox damper, why not? That's on my list in the near future, also.

ThetaTau87

I need to check this. Where is the steering damper located?

furtherrad

on the same vertical plane. I don't mean to overcomplicate the location; in other words, it's below the p.s.o.'s on the firewall. There is a great how-to hosted on s-cars.org<ul><li><a href="http://s-cars.org/postnuke/downloads/pdf/Audi%20UrS4%20Steering%20Damper%20R&amp;R.pdf">Ste ering Damper PDF</a></li></ul>

UrS4boy

Fred M. is THE man on write-ups. That's a good one (as usual)

ThetaTau87

Thanks, that write up is great!