pchansen

My Q just passed 100K miles and so far so good, but.. nothing lasts forever. I was looking at another post and saw where Arnott Industries sells replacement "Air Springs" for about $500 a corner. Thats actually a pretty good deal for a DIYer. I watched the install video and basically the airbag fits over a standard hydraulic strut. So that led me to wonder whether one should also replace the struts (shock) when doing the air springs. I found one OEM sight that sells the struts for over $2000 apiece!! I can't find any aftermarket struts so that leads me to believe these struts don't fail or wear out very often or at all. Out of curiosity, has anyone dealt with replacing either the airbags or the struts them selves? $5000 not including labor just for the front seems excessive even for Audi.

iconoclast

i went arnott on c5 allroad. top notch and they sold a plug and play kit with phenomenal warranty. if you don't care about the air suspension and want to get something that handles well but is static KW makes a very good coil over suspension for a fraction of the price which many have installed.

pchansen

I saw Arnott also makes a conversion kit- complete with an air suspension defeat device so the computer won't throw trouble codes. But again, mostly out of curiosity at this point- there has to be an alternative to $4k worth of struts! I'll call Arnott tomorrow and see what they say.

cuatrokoop

I may have a leaky bag on the rear passenger corner, the 4.2 has started to exhibit some funky handling. I've looked at Arnott and factory. There are also Unity fronts available that includes new shocks as well. Unity had rears as well, but the one source appears to no longer offer them.

cuatrokoop

Also, Unity has a replacement (rebuilt?) compressor for about $400. It looks like the OE (Wabco?) compressor.