sapman

After little more than one season on my summer tires, the inside of the rears are down to the minimum wear marks (maybe 12,000 miles, '07 short body). The inner fronts are worn, also, but will make it through the season (I think). Caught early enough, perhaps I could have had the tires dismounted and turned around, but that's obviously not a solution.

My question is does this simply sound like an alignment issue? I can't imagine what would cause the suspension to "splay" apart, to make the tires wear more on the inside.

Mike141

Could be alignment and also your upper control arm bushings are probably shot too. Mine were shot and caused the inner portions of my tires to wear excessively.

MP4.2+6.0

Look at front upper inner control arm bushings/front upper arm. On a D3 it has become obvious from both my cumulative experience and the boards in general that it is not a question of whether you will have the issue with that bushing, but when. And it will repeat too; it is pretty evident it is a "wear" part with a limited life and typically (well) under 100K miles.

Also, if you rotated your tires along the way, the rear wear OP found may have just been the earlier front wear transferred back there. Just more obvious now perhaps. Been there, seen that too.

And finally, while in theory if you just replace the front upper arm or inner bushing it should just return to the correct alignment, in practice if it was aligned somewhere along the parts wear road, that old wear has now insidiously made its way into your alignment settings, even if the suspension hasn't taken any new hits along the way. Net, I get mine aligned if I do any of the suspension parts up front, other than the roll bar U links. Spending about $90 to avoid grinding up about 10x that in rubber seems prudent. And in various alignments on both my W12 and my old 2000 A6 4.2, the check also found alignment issues in back. Since the 4 wheel alignment is all in the price anyway, obviously I also had them correct that too.

sapman

Certainly all makes good sense. Awhile after writing I realized I'd overlooked something obvious in the bushings. And you're correct, that we rotated fronts/backs this spring, hence all four looking like that.

Thanks,
Tim

Mister Bally

Pictures of good & bad bushings can be found in this thread:
https://www.audiworld.com/forums/sho....php?t=2866730

sapman

So it looks like this could be a diy if motivated enough? Do you typically replace just the bushings, or the entire arm? Any ideas as to cost of parts, or getting it done by a shop? Any special tools required, aside from a press, I assume?

Thanks for the pics! Helps to see what I'll be looking at ahead of time.