Snow Rocket

After the first major snowfall in late november, I decided to aquaint myself with the capabilities of Quattro. Some doughnuts in empty parking lots and rally style drifting on empty back-roads, I found Audi's to be quite the masters of winter.

The next morning I cleaned out the packed wheel wells and ventured out. I immediatly noticed a howling from the front right bearing, figured maybe just ice around cv shaft or caliper. To make things worse, my brakes were pulsing.

Hot brakes, Cold snow = warped/ hardened rotors. Thank you EDL! I know better than to use brakes alot while doing doghnuts, but I never considered the EDL - Electronic Differential Lock. When one tire is spining, the abs pumps on that wheel which transfers power to the opposing wheel. This is a good thing when your not abusing your car. When your doing 30Km/h sideways around a bend, snow fills up the wheels and hits the brake rotors, nice and hot from the EDL.

Six weeks later, bearing stopped howling and instead makes awful grinding noise. Jack car up, wheel has lots of play - Wheel bearing time!

After the usual routine of getting to the bearing (3 hours on the pinch bolt, 20 minutes on everything else) I found the culprit. The bearing has no rubber seal! Just the cv shaft in the knuckle acting as a dust shield, and a flimsy piece of metal on the hub side - another dust shield. I was both shocked and dissapionted. After changing all the bearings on my corolla, each one had good rubber seals on both sides of the bearing. I was expecting some heavy duty rubber seal to keep water and dirt out on a Quattro car. I expected more from Audi! The A6 4.2 has an aluminum steering knuckle. Because there was play in the wheel, the cv shaft was rubbing against the knuckle - that was the grinding noise! Fortunatly no serious damage to either one, but it could have been expensive if I left it longer.

Moral of the story - One hour of fun in the snow equals alot of potential repairs!

I purchased a SKF bearing kit from Auto parts Online Canada, and compared it to an Audi part - Identical part numbers as SKF is the manufacturer for Audi bearings. The only difference was Audi stamped their logo on it after the fact, savings of $85 for the same part.

wailshark

Damn i'm sorry to hear that. Our cars are tons of fun in the snow but repairs are costly.

I haven't had this happen to me yet (knock on wood) when playing in the snow but it is a good thing to watch out for. Whenever you're in the snow make sure to clean out the wheels as even when you're driving home they can start vibrating from the uneven balance and mess with things.

Good thing you're able to DIY this job too, it would have been a lot worse had you had to take it to a mechanic or *shudder* dealer.