Rear Control Arms

[steboarder]

A day after buying myself an S3 I came close to almost certain death, with great thanks to the rear control arm shearing in half.

The back right, lower control arm simply sheared across the forked end leaving my wheel, brakes, drive shaft etc. to basically go wherever they wanted.

The forked arm had sheared in 2 places and I could see after taking it off that one side of the fork had been sheared for quite some time. This means I had been driving my car back the hour and a half from where I bought it with the control arm only clinging on by the skin of its teeth. Thankfully it dropped off in my works car park at 5mph and not on the A1 at 105mph - erm i mean 70mph.

Just a warning to you all that if this happens, it drags all your rear driveshaft out of the back transmition (thats the oil on the floor in the photos) bends the anti roll bar, and at speed would cause a huge accident.

If you have your rear wheels off for any reason i would advise to clean the control arms up and look for any sort of damage, cracks, weak spots, as i would hate this to happen to anyone whilst driving.

A quick search on google shows that this is actually quite common in Europe and there are now re-engineered stronger ones for sale.

Cheers

[SEMKY]

Fliipppin Eck!!!

Glad to hear you are all right mate, I'm off to check mine now!!!!!!!!! Scary to think that I have just done 600 miles on the motorway and this could have happened!

Cheers for the heads up!!!

Anyone else ever heard of this????

[smokey0123]

That was lucky you was only going slow, If it was mine I would replace the other side with the uprated 1 as well.

[steboarder]

2 new controls arms, 2 new drop links, and a new anti roll bar, as well as reseating the drive shaft, then topping up the haldex and transmition fluid we're back on track.

After all this, we think we have come to the single conclusion that is making this happen - the universal ball joint located on the lower side of the wheel hub.

Audi re-called a number of cars, especially in Germany. for these seizing up during 1999 ~ 2001. Water was somehow entering the joint and causing it to seize in one place. As these should freely move with the movements of the car, the seized joint is putting excessive strains on the control arm, over time causing them to fatigue and shear.

My car falls out of the re-call period but still has seized joints. I will be phoning Audi head quarters to take the matter up with them as I think the recall period needs to be extended to cover cars that could have slipped through the net.

If you have your back wheels off it maybe worth undoing the single bolt that holds the control arm on and seeing if your ball joint is OK.

Ill post on here if I get anywhere with Audi.