My buddy owns a 2001 A4 Quattro Avant and is experiencing some uncurable creaking. I have lubed all of the bushing and checked for play in the suspension, so we decided to change the struts. He ordered some replacement struts from Monroe and brought them over so I could show him how to do it and then the **** hit the fan. After disassembling the spring and strut and putting it back together with the new strut we found out that the lower mount on the strut was 1/2" too small. The OEM shock's lower mount inner width measured at2". If you do the math that means that the Monroe strut was 1 1/2" wide. Obviously this won't work, so what do we do now? The part number was correct everywhere we looked. Is there different size struts available? What replacement struts will fit? He doesn't want (or have the money) to go lower or get coilovers, so we just need a replacement. Anyone else experience this problem? Help me out guys...please??!!

 

Get rid of the Monroes and replace them with Audi OEM or a Bilstein replacement.

 

Monroe is what Tuffy puts on their customers cars..... It's not a poor product, but it's still far from being Audi OEM quality. Fitment issues are something different, and could be the result of avant/sedan mix up. I doubt the struts is what was causing the creaking though. Thats always a tell tale sign of a bad control arm(s) when it comes to these cars. OEM struts should last a LONG time.

 

my car sqeeks alot. in my case it is the rear control arms. you can't realy lube them and you cant just replace the bushings you have to buy the whole arm @ around 200 apeice and you have 4 of them. it gets annoying at some time but not enough to spend lots of money.

as for the strutmake sure you have the corect part# quattro /non quattro. and how much did you pay for you monro struts? i belive you can get a bilsteinset for around$450

 

Which control arms are the likely culprit, the upper or lower? Is it as simple as replacing a bushing, or will they need to be replaced? Do they have zerk fittings? Sorry for all of the questions but I don't have access to the car since it isn't mine...

 

People normally just replace the whole arms. Blast all the bushings/ball joints with some lithium grease and see what happens.