Esteemed Audi Forum members,

Thank you for your time in viewing this post!

I have a B5.5 1.8T Quattro Sport Completely original, it is daily driven HARD here in the Santa Cruz Mountains in the Bay Area on Hankook rs3's, 4-wheel sliding is a common pastime. It was all OEM dealership maintained until previous owner cheaply serviced it before i purchased it. (Les schwab upper control arms+4 Wheel alignment)

Long story short(er), the previous owner replaced the failing lemforder control arms with "les Schwab" spec control arms and was 4-wheel aligned correctly. Everything was okay being driven ultra-hard on the daily. (Although my local Bosch kept saying "your control arms are bad" blah blah every time I went in to for service..i ignored him because it was driving magnificently, albeit it with too much body roll for my liking.

So I decided to cheap out, and instead of buying poly bushings for the front and rear stock Sport swaybars, I went "oem" (or so I thought) with bushings from Napa. The rear bushings were definitely oem audi, no problems there. However the front sketched me out, they seemed squishier than the ones I pulled out, plus they seemed slightly mis-matched. At first the a4 drove great, body roll reduced, mission complete or so I believed.

However a few weeks later, i began hearing a clunking noise, usually when I reached 15 degree's or steering angle at least at spirited driving speeds in the hills. The noise is an "all at once" clunk, the vibration is felt throughout the car, the only way to get it to clunk again is to steer the opposite direction equally hard and at least 15 degrees angle. It wont happen if you make a hard right, blast down a straight, then hard right again...ONLY opposite direction turning allows it to clunk again.

So at first I didn't think the bushings could cause such a disturbance in the suspension, so I remembered Bosch's recommendation and I ordered the Meyle HD front suspension kit from ECShttp://www.ecstuning.com/Audi-B5_A4-Quattro-1.8T/Suspension/Control_Arm/ES3005/, replaced everything professionally by Bosch, everything lined up perfectly for 4-wheel alignment. All of it was finished yesterday, And the car never drove better...for the first 2 or so turns...then clunking returned, albeit much quieter than before, and now on the 2nd day of driving its a liiiiiitle bit louder than yesterday.

I'm stumped X_X I want to drive again and its limiting me to the speed limit around the hills, which sucks and takes forever to get anywhere.

*UPDATE* I disconnected the front sway bar and endlinks, put it all back together torqued to spec, one of the bushings was a bit lopsided but that was all i saw...car still clunking no changes

Any advise and pointers would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks guys for reading my essay! I look forward to hearing your replies!

Sincerely,

Jordan Harris
AsmodiusMKII on Youtube

 

Take a look at the other swaybar bushings - not the ones in the end links but those in the bar-to-body mounts. You may have wear there that is allowing the bar to move in its body mounts. You mentioned the kit you bought - did that include tie rod ends? I imagine it did but I'll ask anyhow. Also, have you inspected the inner TREs? They're not a common fail point but they're worth looking into. Finally, if you've retightened everything, there's a chance it's the upper strut mounts - those are known to eventually fail by compression and allow clunks. You'll have to remove the strut/spring assembly to do anything with them but for under $10 each (last time I checked) they're a good idea to replace.

 

Yes you are right about the inner tie rod ends! Having them replaced next week. Cheers Devil!

 

Great to hear the answer is in hand