The brief
The A4 had been getting rougher to live with. Roads that used to feel smooth had developed a knock, speed humps brought a distinct clunk from the front, and the front tyres were wearing unevenly across their tread.
Three symptoms, all from the front suspension. On this car the front end is a multilink setup, several aluminium control arms locating each wheel, and when those arms wear, the wheel no longer stays exactly where the geometry intends.
That is what gives you the clunk from the slack, the rough ride from the bushings flexing, and the uneven tyre wear from the alignment drifting out of spec.
The diagnosis
We pry-tested the arms, levering against each one to see how much the bushings deflected under load. The upper arms showed visible deflection well past spec, and one had a perished bush starting to crack. The other arms on the front axle were the same age and showing their own wear.
That is the point where doing just the worst pair stops making sense. On a multilink front end the arms wear together, the labour to get in there is the same whether you do two or all of them, and leaving six ageing arms in place just means coming back.
So the call was a full front control-arm set, then a four-wheel alignment to reset the geometry the worn arms had let drift.
The work
Out came the front control arms, the whole set. In went new Audi-spec replacements with fresh ball joints and bushings, every fastener torqued to the workshop manual values, and the bush bolts taken up with the suspension at ride height so the bushings sit in their neutral position rather than pre-twisted.
Then the car rolled onto the alignment rack. Camber, caster and toe brought back to factory spec across all four corners. We print the before-and-after numbers so the owner can see what was out and what got corrected.
A road test confirmed the result before it went home.
The outcome
Clunks gone, over bumps and speed humps. The ride back to the smoothness it should have. No pull, the car tracking straight on a flat road.
The A4 went home with the front end tight and precise again. For the owner, the obvious win is the car driving properly. The quieter win is the tyres: with the geometry back in spec the front tyres will now wear evenly across their tread, which means a full set's worth of kilometres instead of a premature replacement.
And a fresh set of arms should give the front end years of service rather than being a recurring fix.