I have a 2003 A6 2.7t 6-Speed and find the suspension too soft for my tastes. My goal is to get a similar feel out of this 4 door in the turns as I get out of my 2 door cars. Anybody autocross or similar with their A6 and can offer pointers on transforming the handling and steering wheel feedback? Thanks in advance!

 

With the 03, Audi made the sport suspension standard on the 2.7T. So, you've got a pretty good street suspension. If what you want is something even stiffer, you'll have to go with something leanding toward a track setup.

What exactly are you looking for? If one of the things you want to do is reduce body roll, a set of H-sport sway bars should be in the picture for you. Great bang for the buck that does an excellent job taming body roll. Here's a link to a great DIY write up: H-sport sway bar DIY

 

I didn't know that that 2003's came standard with sport suspension... thanks for the info. The car just has a floaty, dare I say it, Mercedes-Benz like ride, as compared to the cars that I'm used to driving. I'm not used to bumps being soaked up by the suspension--I'm used to feeling it in my kidneys Probably new shocks & springs at the minimum.

 

you know, thats what i thought too. theres way too much body roll and it tough to judge where that point is when the car slides. in my 98 Eclipse i can tell right away. The thing with the mitsu is, i lowered it 1.5 inches on tokico springs, i put in front and rear upper strut bars and i have 18x8 wheels on it. so the suspension is hard on it and it hits corners nicely. what im wondering is if i go looking for strut bars for our cars, why are they 150 a pop? its the same damn milled piece of aluminum with a mount plate and adjustments screws as on my eclipse, except those are 50 for both shipped. its totall **** how they charge 5 times per unit just cuz of what we drive. its the same damn part that does the same damn thing just as the other ones do, but just cuz its for an audi its 150 a piece? thats complete crap IMO. id rather make myself a pair and spend a grand total of 40 bucks on stainless tubing materials and 1/4 metal plates and theyll work just as well. while were on the topic. my buddy offered to make me a triangular upper front brace. from what i know(i am not a suspension specialist) it seems to me that itll work jsut as well, because it connects the tops of the struts and the frame together and to each other with some stainless tubing and in addition to that it also will mount to the front upper part of the U rail making it even that much more rigid. do you guys thing it would be better for me to get that or just regular strut bars? as far as sway bars, i dont like rear ones actually, i prefer not to have both, i like a medium front sway bar and thats all. with the rear it feels too much like the rear end is slipping on me all the time and it feels like its about to break loose and just swing around and pass me

 

votblindub,

With all due respect, you seriously need to be introduced to the shift and return keys. You cannot expect people to provide feedback on your comments/questions if you write one, massive run-on sentence that is hard as hell to read. Please, take the extra minute to write your post so that it can be read without us having to take an extra five to read it.

Next, you need to do a little reading on the car you own. Sway bars are THE accepted way of addressing body roll in A6es. In addition to significantly reducing body roll, they also help tame understeer. Removing them altogether would be nothing short of absurd. If your only goal is to produce a car you can slide around in, I have no idea what you're doing in a AWD car.

I'm known on this forum for being good at helping people and patient with nOObs, but your little tirade set off my BS meter. PLEASE, a little more knowledge and a lot less random spewing of opinion will help produce a meaningful dialog.

Robotech,

What are you used to driving that has the A6 seem soft? It could be the case that the suspension you're in is shot -- how many miles on it?. Also, what size wheels/tires are you running now and what are you used to?. If you're running a smaller wheel now, that will soften up the ride some (reducing kidney impacts). Truly, the H-sport swaybars do a great job of taming body roll so if that's a concern, you'll want to check it out. The good news is that they're not too expensive ($350 if you DIY). If your shocks are not shot and you're happy with your current wheels, it may just be that you're used to a lot stiffer ride. Remember, the Audi A6 is positioned as a Luxury/Sports sedan. The sport suspension (or a good set of adjustable coilovers - something you may want to consider) and H-sports will push it in the direction of being a Sports/Luxury sedan.

 

SouthboroAudiGuy:
Hey, sorry for my crappy way of writing, im obviously not an english major. The thing with sway bars is that they dont really box in the frame, right? I mean theyre underneath. What i mean is if you slice the car where the suspension is, you end up with 3 lines of a square. You get the bottom line and two vertical sides and no top, so the frame flexes inward on turns. With strut bars you box in the top so its more of a square shape. Now a box isnt the most rigid shape there is, a triangle is. Would he better off if he got both? All the people i talked to keep telling me that sway bars make it feel more like a RWD car and make the *** end slide a bit more. Like i said before im not a suspension specialist. Frankly, im scared of the A6 suspension, theres more sensors in there than the mars rover.

 

votblindub,

Kudos for taking my comments in stride -- they were meant well. A quick note on writing style... I'm definitely not expecting English composition here -- just enough attention to the art of communication to make one's posts worthwhile. I confess that it's a personal pet peeve when people are SO careless about what they write that people on the receiving end have to bend over backwards to understand what was being said. I'm of the opinion that if you've got something worth saying, say it so that people can understand it. 'nuf said.

Regarding sway bars vs. strut bars... Your argument regarding frame geometry is well taken. What's missing from it, however, is the recognition that the box under discussion (no matter how rigid) is separated from the road by an independent suspension. It is the independence of this suspension that produces body roll -- not a lack of rigidity on the part of the box riding on it. For an interesting dialog on this and the very specific role sway bars play in addressing body roll, please see this thread: from another forum.

Let me know your thoughts after going through this -- I'd be happy to continue the dialog.

 

Southboro:
I'd absolutely love to continue the discussion. We should talk on AIM and not take up room here. I dont know much on suspensions, but i am always up for learning more. I definitely see what youre talking about with the indep suspension there. I'm wondering if its possible to obtain a setup like ive seen in a subie. the whole contraption was sorta like shocks, placed ontop of the points where the struts mount attaching the other end to the other side diagonally. they made sort of an X. they were fully adjustable and they made two triangles with the frame's structure and seemed to work marvels on auto x and touge courses. i do not know the manufacturer now do i know what that is called. it seemed to make a lot of sense after looking at it for a while. the thing with swaybars is that theyre rather long considering the amount of weight that goes on them. my car is like 3700+ lbs, now when i take a corner and it rolls, a lot of that mass pushes on the bar. the bar is a rod, so itll have flex to it and being the length they are they wont hold it dead on, right? i mean, obviously theyre made to have some flex, but to make it hard, you upgrade to a larger diameter bar, correct? so im thinking if you use a lower brace and strut bars. the lower brace will hold the bottom of the suspension in stasis and keep the sides from individually flexing and the top held in by the strut bar will hold the frame flex. would that work, or am i making things more complicated than they are?

 

I think you're making things too complicated. Sway bars are a WIDELY used device to reduce body roll. They employ the very simple concept using a steel bar's resistance to twisting as a means to counter the colapsing of the outer suspenion elements in a turn -- thereby reducing body roll.

I think there are two simple things to keep in mind here: 1) people that know a whole lot more than you and I about suspensions have designed this with a specific goal in mind -- reducing body roll without otherwise affecting ride/handing very much - and - 2) they work. MANY, many people (including myself) will attest to this from first hand experience. This last point really trumps any theory you and I may scare up on the matter.

 

so whats a good swaybar for a car like an A6? do they calculate diameter by the car's weight?