I am planning on getting the Eibach Pro Kit Springs for my A4Q sport but was just advised that the front can NOT be brought back into alignment resulting in worn tires and bad handling.
I have not found anything on the Forum about this problem. Please adivise if you have done this mod.
TIA

 

The dealer aligned mine with no problems.

 

and textbook perfect tire wear.

Regards,

James R.

2001 A4 1.8TQMSXP (Oettinger Pedals, Oettinger RE's 17x8 Yoko AVS Sports 225/45/R17, Euro Xenon Housings, Bailey BPV, Turbo5 Intake and RS4 Grille)

 

I have the Audi-Eibach (or Eurosport) springs which appear very similar to the Eibach-Pro kit so my experience is based on them.


This is a fact and not dependent on springs used:

Camber cannot be adjusted on the A4. Front end side-side camber can be balanced by moving a subframe, but that is different.

Now the effect of the various springs:

Camber is the issue with the dealers. The alignment specs show acceptable values for "heavy duty", stock, and sport suspensions. The camber increases negative in each case as the suspension is lower and lower from one to the next. The sport is the lowest spec in the US manual and the increased negative camber of lowering another 3/4" (to the Eurosport) is not documented. So the dealers do not have a value to compare to - not that they can adjust it anyway. My dealer gave me the same line about alignment - then they retracted it when they found out they were selling the springs in their Audi assessories catalog - they still cant validate the camber to any documentation but they at least shut up about it. The other adjustment - toe-in can be set no matter the springs.

So how bad is it? Well the camber on mine went from about .8 degrees with OEM sport to 1.2 degrees with Eurosport. As it happens the 1.2 is about the limit of the sport suspension spec so the added lowering doesnt do anything extreme. Also the camber balance and toe-in didnt change appreciably.

Enought about the specs, How about daily driving? I have put about 7000 miles on my Michelin Pilot sports (225/40x18) with these springs. There is absoutely no more wear on the inside of the tread than the outside and the handling is superb. The lower stiffer springs set the chassis more quickly in a turn making the steering and balance more predictable. I had an opportunity to put this setup into a high performance environment for a day at the Audi Quattro challenge. Since this allows you to safely find the handling limits of the car on dry and wet surfaces I was able to tell how the tires performed (and wear) at the extreme. What I found was the outside of the front tires took most of the abuse in the dry. If I were racing regularly I would be looking to increase the rear swaybar significantly and INCREASE the front negative camber even further to move the contact patch toward the center of the tire - this is pretty typical by the way. However further increasing negative camber generally increases wear on the inside of the tire tread under normal driving so for the street more negative camber than I have is probably not a great idea if I want some life from the tires.

 

Did your track results include an increase in tire pressure?

 

This was mainly to firm up the sidewalls for the added stresses of constant cornering.