Anyone ever bent a rear tie rod on a quattro?

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jcb

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you know where this is going.....

rear left wheel is sitting slightly further in than tha rear right. and appears to be toed out more.
Steering is all squint which confirms the toe out guess and I am hoping it is a tie bar rather than anything more serious!
 
jcb said:
you know where this is going.....

rear left wheel is sitting slightly further in than tha rear right. and appears to be toed out more.
Steering is all squint which confirms the toe out guess and I am hoping it is a tie bar rather than anything more serious!
Click to expand...

what happened???
 
I slid into a ******* kerb at about 1mph! not some crappy new concrete thing. Oh no, I hit a 6" high lump of Edinburgh's finest Granite!

bottom arm is a big chunky y shaped steel unit with three big bushes.
tie rod is a pissy bit of soft aluminium.
I may be wront bu t my money is on that.

I hit it low and towards the rear of the tyre. so the full force would have been directed to the rod,

need to get it on a ramp when I have calmed down!
 
bottom arms are strong , in the direction they were made to be strong, but even slow speed impacts can bend them as they are not ment to be strong side ways,i have seen it before but you maybe be right and i could be wrong, hopfully it wont be to bad and an easy fix,
 
audi upgrades
tie rod ball joint looks ********, now siting at an angle pointing inwards instead of direction of travel.
hope it the only bent bit!!
 
no ball on the bottom arm at the rear
rearsuspension.jpg
 
I mashed my old nova into a kerb on braid road in edinburgh many years back.

Was trickling along at about 10mph, road camber goes funny and the car slides about 2feet sideways, which was still on the road, but now heading streight towards a parked car. I had no grip at all so figured i'd try for the kerb as i'd rather damage my car, than both.

Car dropped into the gutter at the edge of the kerb and took out most of the front wing, didnt hit the parked car thou lol!
Gearbox also leaked from that point on, for some random reason.

I kicked/yanked/pulled the wing back into the roughly correct shape, managed to reverse out the gutter, and continued down the hill at 5mph :p
 
mine drive like some kind of crab at the moment!!
 
Well it is not the tie rod!

changed that and crank all possible concentric bolts to try and straighten it up by eye, stilll well off. I would guess at 2-3 degrees toe out on the rear left.

Had it on a laser alignment system before the break and they just said "its bent!", they were a subaru dealer so no expertise expected.

I suspect I have twisted the upright and pushed it in slightly to give the higher offset appearance to the wheel and toed out rear wheel.

This happened at approximately 5mph sliding sideways into a solid kerb. wheel is barely scuffed to gove you an idea.

STAY AWAY FROM KERBS (as if you needed to be told.)

bring on the new subframe and rear assembly!!
 
bent arm?

Seems its more likely that you've bent a thin pressed steel wishbone than a cast iron upright...

The wishbones are often designed to fold in an impact like that, to protect the expensive components, ie the chassis/subframe and uprights etc.
 
well it is possible but without having any kind of replacement component to test it against and not being able to see any damage to any of the components I can't be sure.
Would make sense though. I just can't see how it would twist so significantly without visible damage.
I have the tie bar adjusted fully out so try and bring the toe back in and the lower wishbone outer concentric to try and put some negative camber on it.

The Tie bar had taken some of the impact for sure as the concentric washer was stripped of its inner key. subframe seemed fine as has a slotted fixing for the tie bar so it just moved in the slot.

I am already in the process of getting a spare subframe to fit the new subframe bushes to, so I can just swap it out rather than spend more time off the road. As it has wishbones and uprights attached (hopefully!) I can replace the whole lot and avoid the one by one trial and error of trying to find out what is bent. (been there with the front when I bought it and it is a PITA!!).
 
sounds like fun

going to do new suspension bushes on the rear sub frame too?
 
yep, thats the ones I need to replace. lower wishbones are already powerflexed.
got some 80 shure 034 ones but didn't fancy trying to replace them with the subframe in place.

Also have some rear diff seals and this to fit...

IMAG0181.jpg
 
A wee while back I hit a canyon sized pot hole on the A82 (loch lomond side, before the upgrades). It wasn't til it was parked up the next day that I realized something wasn't right.
I thought it was ok so drove it back to Fort William..The top 'A' shaped arm / wishbone had failed big stylie... The mech who fixed said I should buy a lottery ticket as I was a very lucky chap!
Maybe worth a look although sounds unlikey as due to the impact described? Which kerp was it in the reeky? I'll go an shout at it or sumit..
 
Last edited:
its possible.
will have a look.
have a full set of arms, uprights and a subframe (just need to get it here somehow!) so the tops will be replaced as well.

be easier to tell when they are off.

can see the kerb from my house which is annoying. may have to move house....
 
Hey jcb have you figured out what you have bent?? I just did the same thing the other day i fish tailed into a huge 9inch kerb by my house at like 5 mph. Sucks so bad. I replaced the lower tie rod like you and it did nothing(money well waisted) . The mechanic thinks its the knuckle. What do you think? If it is the knuckle do you know if an 01 A4 rear knuckle will work on my 01.5 S4?? Thanks a lot!
 
Not sure what an "01.5" S4 is... unless your stateside?

We got the B6 model mid '01, so there isnt an 01.5 B5 S4 here...

Any facelift B5 A4 rear upright will fit, doesnt have to be an S4 item. I would suspect the arms themselves (ie the wishbones) would bend before the knuckle itself though.
 
Wow! thanks for the quick reply. But sorry i wasn't very clear i forget you are in the US. So my car is a B5 S4 we call it 01.5 because there were a couple upgrades in the engine, turbos, small stuff. I guess you can consider it a 01. Anyway, so you think its not the knuckle, because i personally agree with you. That knuckle is very very strong but the mechanic kept saying something about camber. I inspected it myself and when we replaced the tie rod the actual ball joint connecting to the knuckle was still a tiny bit angled compared to the other side. So you think it's the wishbones, is it possible the subframe maybe?
 
Generally components like wishbones are designed to act a bit like a fuse. You want the wishbone to bend because its easy and cheap to replace compared to the knuckle or subframe. You'll probably have to take the parts off to see the difference though :(
 
But mr audi probably made the hub the weak link so that if anybody did bend one they could rape them for buying a new one.
 
Thanks a lot guys for all the input. I'm going to double check the wishbone components before i buy another part for the car.
 
ongoing.....
bought a rear subframe assembly, fitted the new bushes, have stripped the uprights off it to fit new bearings but as yet haven't had a chance to get the subframe on!!
rented a garage for a couple of months as mine has so much crap in it I couldn't get the car in!

hoping to get it done this week ......

as for what is bent I suspect that it is the upright.
strong or not the torsional stress put through it when you hit the rear edge of the wheel six inches up has pushed the tie rod in its mounting hole in the subframe and twisted teh concentric bolt.
this gave it more toe than it should have.
The only way it could do that is to either twist in its vertical axis or bend both top wishbone and bottom wishbone mounting points. I can't see any bend in the wishbones but i still have 2-3deg toe out on one wheel
 
guess what i did the same to mine. took it to a friends garage to have the alignment checked and he spotted that the arm coming from the upright had some surface rust on that had flaked off in one place where the arm had bent. top bloke he managed to get all 4 wheels pointing in the same direction but it did involve adjusting all the wheels to max settings to compensate for the bent arm. as soon as i get a replacement he should be able to set it back
 
when you say "arm" do you mena the main upright with the hub assembly?
did you see where it had bent so I can have a look to see if mine is the same?

cheers
 
UPDATE: Hey gies, finally got the car fixed today. It turned out to be the entire knuckle, there was a bend in the arm that connects to the rear tie rod arm. I still can't believe that i bent the knuckle and nothing else. It is made of a super tough material. Just thought id update.
 
wow.
still surprised how easily they bend
 
Yeh that is impressive.

I once repaired a clio for a guy i worked with, he'd been driving along a main road, saw some mates in a petrol station, and probably in some kinda attempt to show off had tried to handbrake turn his way into the forecourt. Clearly was going far too fast, as the front understeered into a huge kerb and the rear followed.

He dropped it off at the workshop i had, and i found that not only had he bent the subframe and the lower wishbone, but he'd sheared the knuckle clean thru below where the strut mounts, bent the shock, and bent the tie rod on the rack.

Put a new front end on it for him and test drove it round the block, which highlighted a bearing whine from the rear axle. The wheel looked streight, but we suggested he should get the car on an alignment machine and check if the axle is bent before we changed the bearing, plus the front end would need setup anyway. Instead of driving home and taking the car to an alignment shop like we suggested, he insisted on taking the car out to "cruise" that night, and after driving round (no doubt like a knob) for several hours, the bearing collapsed about half a mile from his house.

At which point he claimed we didnt fix the car properly and went elsewhere for the bearing replacement :tocktock:
 
Woah !! the whole upright !!

Thats pig iron for ya !!

Weighs 400 tons and has the strength of tissue paper !
 
yes thats the part on mine thats bent too. picked up the good one a couple of days ago and tried to strip it down, it was removed from a car as complete corner (hope its not bent too) however he forgot to undo the drive shaft bolt so have got a hub assy with drive shaft and no way of undoing the bolt basically fing tight and no way of holding the arm or shaft to undo it. will have another go next week will try to post pics of two side by side to see if bend is visible
 
put two wheel studs in the flange, put a bar between them and against the floor and then crack off the hub bolt. looks like you are closing a large pair of scissors.
one leg is your bar on the hub bolt , the other is stopping the flange from turning.

have the same set up with my spare rear
 
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