grady1

MP4.2+6.0

Let's see. In the plainest English I can muster, I view Meyle as complete and utter crap for suspension parts. OE? That is laughable. I used a kit once on an A6 4.2 when I too was burned by the marketing propaganda. Started replacing parts within a year, and it essentially ruined the whole front suspension upkeep wise. Never again. Not alone there either; if you watch posts by the longest term owners who DIY and own for long periods, you will find that theme pretty regularly. Yes, you can find it and a variety of other dubious crap origin parts for a "cheap" price any day of the week. Karlyn is another. Cheap is cheap in more ways than one, or you get what you pay for as a corollary.

The most common OE supplier for Audi suspensions is probably Lemfoerder, a subsidiary of ZF. A.k.a. the steering and transmission company for many Euro vehicles. Audi also uses TRW a fair amount, sometimes in the same vehicle (upper vs. lower for example). Delphi and a few others appear occasionally.

On a more practical basis, when new the difference is not obvious. They all look like aluminum parts with a bushing and a ball joint. BUT, the crap ones can crap out in as little as a year and 20K miles. That was my own experience, and it has come up countless times on the D series boards where the cars are older (three complete generations now), among the heaviest and were among the early adopters of the aluminum suspension set up in the latter 90's.

Alos, do not expect these parts to be bulletproof. You can start to find issues at as few as 50K miles in some cases in you look closely, and 70-90K more commonly. The design fundamentally sources from a mid 90's A4. Problem is that car weighed like 1000 pounds less and had much smaller brakes and wheel weight was probably ⅓ less. All of that is the unsprung weight where the suspension elements take a real beating as those big components pork up. Q5 specific take off point was the original A5. Q5 by contrast is yet more a porker relative to (already overweight) sedan counterparts, and the wheel sizes and weights big and heavy. Nonetheless, I would and do pay a premium to get 3-4x the real world life from the parts, avoid the labor and hassles. It also avoids the hidden cost alignments that go with a lot of control arm work, especially if the car was aligned previously with already worn arms.

FWIW, you can source the Audi OE parts from a discounted online dealer of course. Or, if you jump to the known OES's and shop them, you can often find arms for about a third less than discounted dealer. Other parts like sway bar links can be as little as ⅓ the dealer price in Lemfoerder. RM European for example is one of my go to sites to check Lemfoerder parts. But if you take it to a shop and don't supply parts, the mechanic probably makes that discounted spread. Here it sounds like the double whammy since the "cheap" parts were used by the shop. Triple whammy unfortunately if (when...) they crap out early.

Bob Petruska

"genuine Audi replacement parts" does not equal "genuine Audi OEM replacement parts".

The wording is very misleading, but not a lie from the shop.

The are genuine "Meyle" Audi replacement parts.


You will find ("genuine" replacement parts) for almost anything made on earth, but they are not OEM. Just check cell phone battery wording on Ebay and Amazon to be mislead...........