Latest car project

Owning a high mileage Audi is a bit like owning a 100 year old house. Stuff is constantly breaking, and needs updating… but you do it because you love where you live.

My front end control arms have been groaning since soon after I got the car. When my car was under an aftermarket warranty, I brought it to (and I’m going to name names) AVS in Berkeley. I used to work with the owner way back in the day of German Auto Salvage, so I figured that the owner would not hose me. I was wrong.

After paying an extra $700 to have them put in a new German made steering rack (cause the warranty company would only pay for a cheap Chinese made remanufactured one) and they would not do the job unless they could put in a German made original Audi rack, and after three weeks of waiting to make an appointment and being blown off (and the clock running out on my warranty), they finally replaced my steering rack…. and the fricking thing still groans…. and now I’m out of warranty. Grrrrr….. While they had it, they replaced my upper control arms and tie rod ends, but not the lowers.

Fast forward a year, and now a wheel bearing is failing. Being a bit on the broke side, and after gaining some confidence on how the job is done, I decide to tackle the bearing myself. Oh, while I’m at it, I’ll do the last 4 lower control arms… you know, as long as I have it apart anyway. Turns out that the price of just the lower 4 control arms individually is the same price as a complete front end kit, so I order the kit.

This is the kit:

Jumpin’ Geebus on a pogo stick, this thing has a lot of parts. What am I getting myself into? Okay, I’m only doing the lower four control arms, some of the hardware, maybe the sway bar links if the ones in there are bad. I’ll either fence the unused arms or save them for if (when) they fail again.

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