'04 front Suspension Airbags issues?

[LJH]

My Dad has his '04 A8L in the dealer for an issue with the front suspension. Last week the front suspension would not pump up and his indy said that he was not comfortable working on it and suggested taking the car to the dealer. Get this, the dealer is saying that the front airbags need to be replaced and the job is going to run around $5000.00, $4000.00 for parts and a grand to install them. I searched all the Audi forums as well as google and actually did not come up with much in the way of info. Wondering if any of you have been down this road before, after market airbags (I found a bunch of info for the Allroad but not the A8)?, coilover conversion? That is crazy money and there has to be a better way.

Cheers,
Jim

[Adjuster]

Just curious how many miles, and what kind of roads/driving?

These air bags should last for a very long time. (Or I'm very glad that I got the extended warrenty with the CPO.)

My 2004 just passed 22,000 miles. (Very low for the year, but I'd like to know that it's going to get me at least the 136,000 my last A8 did.)

[LJH]

ADJ,
The car just passed 40K, my Dad was using the car just for trips so the car would sit in the garage for weeks on end and then would rack up a lot of miles at one time. I did a bunch of reading and I think this could be related as the bags were not being inflated/deflated all the time. Because the car was mostly used for trips the mileage is mostly hi-way miles so pretty decent roads.

Cheers,
Jim

[Adjuster]

Hmmm. Well, I bought mine with only 13,700 miles on it.. (Owned by a older couple, they hardly ever used it, and they repalced it with another A8L, just an 09.. Must be very nice to have that sort of disposable income, as the 04 was/is like brand new still.)

Hope that all the sitting around it did, has not caused any problems with my air bags either. IF so, I do have a Fidelity warrenty on the car. (Claimed to be the best for Audi's.)

Before I bought the A8L, I had an 98 A8, and loved it, other than the transmission. It worked fine, but only if you shifted it in tiptronic. I think the TCU connection was screwed up, or it could be just worn out. (I bought it with 92k, did the timing belt, and put 136k on the car when I replaced it with the 04.) The engine was perfect, and the trans worked, but again, worked best with it being shifted.

These "lifetime" fill transmissions are a joke. I plan on changing the pickup/filter and fluid at 50k, and then again at 100K when I have the timing belt replaced.

Next time around, it's a newer FSI engine with the timing chain too. :) (Perhaps a used RS6 would be fun, assuming I can get one, and ship it here.)

Thanks for the feedback.

I'll post up if my bags have any issues.

[DirtyJerzey]

interesting, im at about 70k on my 04' and i drive with no air in my bags at all. No Problems.. I slammed my car about around 10k miles ago.

[STONER]

Check out a company called Arrnott or something like that. They made good airbags for the audi allroad and might have a cheaper solution.