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Audi A4 - CV joints

voetsektxvoetsektx Member Posts: 3
edited April 2014 in Audi
My wife has a 1998 Audi A4 (2.8 V6), purchased October 1997, which has about 33,000 miles on it. She took it in for a service today and they told her that she needs to replace the CV joints. Does anybody think that these CV joints have worn prematurely? I think that because of the age of the car and the number of miles driven that they have worn prematurely. The service guy at the dealer seemed to think that this was not out of the ordinary. Is there a predicted life span for these items and does driving style have any impact on their life. Any help/advice would be appreciated.
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    Mr_ShiftrightMr_Shiftright Member Posts: 64,481
    This is one of those "it depends" questions. It does sound premature under normal circumstances, but if, for instance, the dust boots were torn previously, that could do it (all the lube is washed out by rains, etc.).

    Also, I trust the shop actually disassembled and looked at the CV joints? How was this diagnosis made? X-ray eyes? crystal ball? Intuition?

    If he "just wiggled" it, sorry, not good enough, unless you are actually hearing a loud knocking noise on hard left or hard right turns. And if the boots are just torn, then you can just replace the boots.

    I would get a second opinion, or at least quiz them as to how they came to this conclusion so readily.
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    voetsektxvoetsektx Member Posts: 3
    Thanks for the comments. I don't dispute that they needed replacing, as I noticed the knocking during turns a couple of weeks ago. I was just wondering if this was considered a normal period of time for them to last or if it was unusual. I have had previous FWD cars that I have driven over 40k miles and never had a problem with them. Further to your response though, would you expect the dealer to check the dust boots during a service inspection, or is it something that you would recommend the owner checking also. We follow regular service intervals.
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    Mr_ShiftrightMr_Shiftright Member Posts: 64,481
    Oh, absolutely the dealer should check the dust boots. This is a critical observation.

    Well, then, given that the CV joints were probably bad, yes I do feel this was a premature failure. I would have expected 60K-90K on CV joints for a car of this quality. But you know, if you spread out all the failures of Audi CV joints on a graph, I guess statistically a few would fall in your range. Bad luck in the roulette wheel of manufacturing tolerances, I guess.
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