Hi,
Im new to the forum so hello to everyone. With that said on to the problem. I have a 01 A6 Avant on h&r coilovers. I have a clanking noise coming from my front right pass side. The noise happens when my front right tire hits a bump/hole and also when the car lifts up when going over a hill(like when theirs no pressure on the wheel and the suspension is in free travel). So i took it up to the shop yesterday to see if we could find where the noise was coming from and found nothing! All the bushings and ball joints appear to be tight. We had it on the lift and shook the sh*t out of everything and its all tight. Im guessing the coils are keeping whatever is lose tight when its on the lift? It sounds to me like the sway bar was knocking but the end links and everything else appear to be tight. Has anyone else encountered this before? Any help is greatly appreciated!

 

Well you're not going to be able to diagnose some of the creaks/noise just by lifting it up and shaking things around. I mean you can't apply 1,000lbs of force which is what happens when the noise occurs under normal operating conditions.

If the control arms are old (original? over 100K?) then yeah, they are probably the cause. I mean the clunking noise either is from the control arms (common), sway bar links (little less common), tie rods (not so common), or rack and pinion system (pretty rare). Hopefully someone else will let you know a better way of diagnosing....

 

Yea, thats the problem, we cant duplicate the situation under which the noise occurs. We did use a pry bar to test the bushings on the control arms and see if there was any extra play but everything seems tight and the control arms do not appear to be that old.

 

upper strut bearing ? very common on my other Audi ..

 

I didnt think that 01 A6's had strut bearings?