2012 Rear strut squeak "normal"?
 

First post. I just bought a 2012 Q5 CPO S Line with 14k miles and took it in to Audi dealer today for scheduled service. One of the issues is an annoying squeak/creak that seems to be coming from the passenger side rear wheelwell. My brother, who's a skilled auto engineer, surmised that it was something simple, like a strut bushing. You can create the noise by just pushing down on the rear bumper when the car is parked. The dealer tells me that the sound, according to the technician, is "normal" and that the tech heard the same sound when he was doing final delivery prep on another new Q5 today. Doesn't sound right to me. Any thoughts or suggestions? Thanks.

Can you isolate it to specific situation? Like weight transfer (from drivers side to passenger side, etc.)? Is it a squeak or a click? Is it possible to be something to do with the rear sway bar?

It happens whenever the passenger rear wheel goes over some kind of bump. We have a pretty uneven drive at our condo (e..g.raised, but smooth, manhole cover) every time that passenger side goes over it, there's a distinct creak. Anyway, I'm just annoyed that the dealer writes it off as "normal" for this model, even a brand new one, where there's no way I would pay $50k for vehicle and expect to hear this every time I went slowly over a bump......

You could try another dealer and see what they say. At least then you'd have your concern documented by c couple of places if it turns into something more serious.

In every car I've had, every time there is an issue that is caused by a sound, a service writer will try to tell me it is "normal". Specifically:

- I had the clutch in my 3 series go out years ago. New clutch was put in under warranty, and when I got the car back, you could hear a metallic sound when you pushed the clutch pedal in. Dealer who did the work claimed it was normal, took it to another, and they confirmed it needed a new flywheel. No more noise.

- Our Q's mirrors started making a grinding noise when folding. Service writer claimed "that's just the noise they make", and I had him fold the mirrors on a new Q. No sound. They replaced the motor on the one mirror, no more sound.

- Our Q's trunk made the infamous "thunk" from the motor. Two initial claims the sound was normal (it was kind of hard to replicate, to be fair). I told them about the bolt that needed to be tightened (per the thread here), but they finally just replaced the motor. No more thunk.

- Noise coming from my 3 series suspension over bumps. Dealer claimed normal suspension noise. Finally got them to mic up the car for a road test, and it turned out to be a bad control arm.