Hi All,

Before I go any further .... Yes 'Justforfun' I did heed your advise to "Watch those kerbs on those 21" Alloys" and look what happens....

How could my week get any worse? First of all I am attempting to asseble an Alphason TV stand and find several bolts missing. I cracked a mirror in the bathroom whilst fitting it too tightly, Then this happens...........

I am in the process of reversing my Q out of the garage, nothing new in that. When I got out of my car to return to close my garage door I noticed this......

<a href="http://s124.photobucket.com/albums/p21/Beemer4meX5/?action=view¤t=SSC_0135.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p21/Beemer4meX5/SSC_0135.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>


The Culprit............. A bracket protuding on not one side of my garage door frame but 2 sides.

I want the builders head!!!!!!!

Audi have quoted £346 for a new tyre. The wheel repair has to be assessed before a repair can be considered.


<a href="http://s124.photobucket.com/albums/p21/Beemer4meX5/?action=view¤t=SSC_0132.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p21/Beemer4meX5/SSC_0132.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

<a href="http://s124.photobucket.com/albums/p21/Beemer4meX5/?action=view¤t=SSC_0134.jpg" target="_blank"><img src="http://i124.photobucket.com/albums/p21/Beemer4meX5/SSC_0134.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket"></a>

The house builder is going to get a good talking to next week.

Get the wheel repaired by one of those mobile chip repair specialists (it's what Audi dealers do with their used stock to improve their resale). Also, do a search for tyres on the web, Audi will not be the cheapest. I did it myself with an earlier car and the wheels looked as good as new. You may want to wait until you get more damage though as the price is per wheel not per scratch. Let's face it it's going to be difficult to keep them away from the kerb. I used chipsaway.co.uk but they are a franchise op. so you may not get the same results. Ask around locally for a recommendation

My wife says you <i>must</i> have used up your bad luck by now!
What can I say?...thanks for posting the pics...LOL ( I winced honest)
Here is my suggestion .
take the broken Mirror and mount it in the garage so you can see that corner as you reverse out.
PS watch out for the other side!

SPRING 2008: AUDI AND THEIR "RELIABLE" Q7 MODEL BRING US BACK TO THIS "Q7 ACCIDENT" BLOG

Follow Audi Q7's new horror story on http://accident-audi-q7.skynetblogs.be/<ul><li><a href="http://accident-audi-q7.skynetblogs.be/">http://accident-audi-q7.skynetblogs.be/</a</li></ul>

SPRING 2008: AUDI AND THEIR "RELIABLE" Q7 MODEL BRING US BACK TO THIS "Q7 ACCIDENT" BLOG

Follow Audi Q7's new horror story on http://accident-audi-q7.skynetblogs.be/<ul><li><a href="http://accident-audi-q7.skynetblogs.be/">http://accident-audi-q7.skynetblogs.be/</a</li></ul>

Audi. If it were something else. you wouldn't be alive.

I cant make head or tail of that blog.
It would appear that neither side has backed down or admitted any liablilty.
Did I miss something, cos it looks to me like he crashed his car and we have not had a stack of repeats of some major flaw!!!
I am surprised that in two years nobody managed to translate it into better English.
Rather unfairly I never included him in the numbers!

2nd comments from Ashley.

Wheel looks worse than it really is. I have 22" and have done all 4x wheels on mine. I have a local guy repair/refurb to good or better than new at £35 per wheel.

As for the tyres - it is almost criminal to get the dealer to replace or even quote on them! There are by far too many specialist tyre shops local to most of us in the UK who can get you better price/service/choice of brands than the stealership (oops, I meant dealership!)

I once was at our local dealership and a premiership footballer walked in and bought 4x 18" with tyres fitted from the dealership for his Audi TT. He, the footballer, must have thought it was impressive to show off his wealth...yeap, I thought he was not only stupid but also ill informed too!!! He paid over 50% more than he would have had he shopped around - which is easily done nowadays on the net. No wonder football players often end up penniless after their playing career is over. Naturally, he had the obligatory blonde misses on his arm wearing a skirt that was so short that even I noticed her red knickers...LOL...and, no, I was not looking on purpose it was on show ok!

As the saying goes...easy come, easy goes.

Bit harsh AutoUnionQ7.

Q7accident is right to keep all informed of new developments on this story. I read this story about a year ago when researching the Q7 whilst waiting for mine to be delivered. I almost cancelled my order however the dealership had all my funds up front so I had to take delivery of the car.

For a long time after taking delivery, the said accident did cross my mind on each excursion out in the Q7.

I think we should all take the time and read the article again as, IMHO, we are better off being well informed than being the victim. Also, and I suspect, Audi were grateful that there were no deaths from the accident and probably used the opportunity to look at the suspension of the Q7 after the accident. No doubt they might have looked at a number of new changes as a direct result of the accident - we the customers will never ever be party to any such changes though. Lets see what recall comes up in the future.

Keep in mind that safety is paramount to any car manufacturer and its customers and to that end both need to play a key role in highlighting issues so that these issues can be dealt with forthwith.

In regards to the article, it is my understanding that the driver DID not loose control.
If you have kids, like I do, you may have same view as I have in relation to the accident else it is difficult to understand the freight this family went through. I have had accidents alone before as well as with my friend in the car. Both were unpleasant experiences that I will not wish on my worst enemy. Think how it must feel like as a father/husband to have an accident with your loved ones in the same car. Where you will ordinarily see yourself as a protector of the family - it must be difficult to feel helpless and blame yourself for an accident that happens whilst you were driving.

Below is an extract from the said article...pls read before making further comments.

"While driving on the highway in France (at approximately 130 km/h), the front wheel on the right side got loss (absolutely no obstacle on the way), stayed for a while under the car while the car went in one move to the right (the wheel pushed the interior side of the car inside breaking the leg of my daughter). The right wheel also got deformed, while the car was sliding to the right. The car flew into the outside landscape then hit (almost) frontally the land hill, obviously first with the right front side and immediately afterwards also with the left front side.
It went then up to an angle of approximately 45 degrees, then fell back on the ground and hit it first with its right corner at its bottom, then fell completely on its right side.
It is a model TDI 3.0 l (233 HP), 7 seats. It has a weight of approximately 2.5 ton.
The frontal airbags didn't work (neither because of the frontal choke, nor because of the seat belts), the lateral ones neither, when the car (2.5 ton) fell on its side. The car was equipped with all possible airbags proposed by the constructor.
As if this was not enough, the central internal mirror also got loss at the moment of the choke and hit the head of my wife, who was driving the car.
I'm very happy that my wife and my daughter survived to this very severe accident (the car has been very normally declared as a total loss), these two members of my family being relatively lightly injured (broken sternum for my wife and hit on her head and broken leg for my daughter).
There are witnesses of this accident who can confirm what they saw.
Just to give you an idea about the attitude of Audi towards this accident (which could reveal some very serious technical problems with this car, problems that could endanger the life of people buying such a car), they didn't do any technical expertise at all until now, even if the car is back in Belgium since July 11th, 2006.
"

AutoUnionQ7, apologise for such long winded response however this is a subject I feel very strong about - and take it from me, I love cars...own high power sports cars and understand risks however I do think your comment is a bit harsh.

1. Q7accident's post had absolutely nothing to do with the original post about a scratched wheel.

2. He posted the exact same post twice - again about something completely unrelated. "Spamming" is a perfectly fair description by AutoUnionQ7.

3. It's like yelling "Fire" in a theater when there's no fire. Two years later and there's been no other case (I'm sure Q7accident would have made it a point to find one if there were) that anyone has heard of with this happening.

4. His own INSURANCE COMPANY found no technical defect that would implicate Audi. He may not have the money to go after Audi (his claim not mine) but they could have made a big deal about it and any insurance company would IF they had found cause. Heck, can you imagine the class action lawsuit money someone could make if this claim were true.

5. It sounds like a second independent insurance examiner looked at the car and concluded "there was no reason to believe that the accident was a result of a manufacturing fault".

6. Audi and his insurance company sent the metal arms in question to a university lab for analysis. They concluded that the parts they were given were not the cause for the wheel coming off.

7. I wouldn't have expected the airbags to go off under those circumstances yet he makes this into a big scandal. Sensors set off the airbags. If those aren't hit with the designated force necessary to deploy the air bags then guess what, no airbags. Period. What's the mystery?

8. It's a shame that people might read his blog and not buy the Q7 as a result. It's a great car with an excellent safety record. You admitted you almost didn't buy yours because of it. Do you regret your decision? Do you fear every day that you're wheel is going to come off on the freeway? Come on.

9. Two years later and no recall and no suspension revisions as far as I know. Hmmmm, maybe this WAS just a single case out of the 150,000+ Q7's sold around the world.

10. My suspicion is that this was caused by a previous incident which may have seemed minor at the time (like a nasty pothole or something similar) which weakened the metal and eventually the fatigue did it in. It could've even happened before he took ownership of the car and he would never know about it.

11. Now he's claiming to have found another similar incident on someone else's Q7 but instead of posting any facts he just tries to scare more people. His own facts about his case discredit the idea that this is Audi's fault. Posting pictures of someone else's crashed Q7 isn't going to change that.

I've read his entire blog. He's bitter and angry and as a husband and father I can understand it. However, since I'm not looking at this through his anger I can clearly see the facts that his insurance company saw, Audi saw, an independent insurance examiner saw and the university analyst saw. Emotion, angry words, two years of blogs and weird AudiWorld posts don't make something true. AutoUnionQ had it right, he needs to get over it and stop trying to scare people.

If you actually read Q7accident's blog you'll see the same issues I saw but if you only read a little you might be alarmed into thinking this is a safety issue with Q7's. It isn't. I'll save you some time...<ul><li><a href="http://forums.audiworld.com/q7/msgs/24708.phtml">http://forums.audiworld.com/q7/msgs/24708.phtml</a</li></ul>

Justforfun, there is no broken mirror! they are folded in every time I put my car in the garage.

I apperciate that q7accident brought this to our attention but these posts are not relative or objective.
Like others, I have always had this in the back of my mind but also like others I think q7accident has understandably not been objective enough.
While it would not be right to have this kind of thing hidden, it is not right to have it thrust in our faces inappropriately.
AutounionQ7 took the bold step (I typed immediately about him policing poor quality posts, tongue in cheek....but never posted) and while he may say it stronger than most he makes a fair point.
I feel very deeply for q7 accident and would love to have had the opportunity to go to the scene and thoroughly examine every aspect of this most awful accident not least for my peace of mind. Something went wrong, very wrong but I fear we will never know. It is very hard for people to let go of this kind of thing and even from personal experience I know q7accident still relives that moment.
AutoUnionQ7 is right, for Q7accident's own sake he needs to "get over it"
I do not want to see another repost of this accident unless another Q7 driving in a straight line at 130 kmh without incident loses a wheel! ...in other words never.

Read this analogy.
I was driving an HGV behind another HGV when the guy in front gave a slight wiggle.
Immediately I saw emerging from under his truck a 4"x4" skid about 4 feet long in pine. It was tumbling and sliding along the road but central to my position. I could not avoid it and passed right over it without touching.
The car tailgating me with a view to overtaking was much lower to the road and hit it dead centre. It bounced off the ground and flew into the air spining end on end. Even though he slammed on it smashed into his windscreen and then went over his roof bashing and scratching only to fall off into the ditch and dissappear.
He flashed me pursued, overtook and forced me into the side nearly causing another accident.
I have never in my life seen anyone in such a rage. He called the cops and screamed at me threatening my life and accusing me of not securing it on my truck.
Even though half an hour later the police found a lowloader with a dozen unsecured skids this size up ahead on the road the guy never accepted it didnt come off my truck. In his mind he saw it fall off my truck when in fact he saw it bounce up from his own car.

Part of the story was missing in both cases but not in the minds of the occupants of the cars.

"...If there were suspension problems, we would've heard of it!"

History has thought us that ethics will never stand in the way of commercial decisions (see links below for a couple of major cover-ups. Note that both of these were initially strongly denied until many incidents over a period of time caused the said companies to re-think and do something) however I hope you are right with the above statement.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1345087.stm

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2163115/sony-loses-quarter-profit

I do also think this AW has been a friendly forum to date and hope it continues to be so - I prefer to be well informed and show humility than otherwise.

I still do think your comment is a bit harsh the more I read it. Just comes across as thoughtless and definitely careless.

MililaniTT,
Good points and well laid out.

"8...It's a great car with an excellent safety record.

My response - sure, Audi generally are safe cars and that fact is not in question. One could also argue that Audi are not renowned for building SUVs and good though the Q7 is, it is fair to state that it is too early to announce that it has excellent safety record. It is too soon and yes, so far all is well. But hey, let us not allow Audi to rest on its backside - ALL ISSUES must be highlighted.



You said - "8...You admitted you almost didn't buy yours because of it. Do you regret your decision? Do you fear every day that you're wheel is going to come off on the freeway? Come on."

My response - I am, offcourse, glad I did not cancel the purchase as I loved the car at first glance. Equally, I love going on holidays and yet despite many assurances, every time I get on a plane I do still have that little fear at the back of my mind about the plane crashing - sad, I know nonetheless the fact of the matter is that I do still have those fears.

I do still think AutoUnionQ7 was a bit harsh with his comments. AutoUnionQ7 could have subtly made his views known without being blatantly rude towards q7accident.

There is a lot to be said for humorous rebuff than a confrontational rebuff. AW, after all, is for `our' benefit not for the few who think this is their kingdom!