Think something is wrong with my front end.

[oblu]

Crawled under the car last night, but can't find anything obvious. Here's my weird list of symptoms:

1) when I first got the car, the variable rate steering was pretty obvious. At highway speeds the steering would stiffen up noticeably. Now not so much, it's always pretty light. Doesn't feel loose, except it's following ruts like crazy (suspect alignment).
2) massive understeer on freeway on-ramps. 50mph, wet, marked for 60mph, I can turn the wheel slightly trigger understeer, release, understeer, release. Also feels really unstable in the dry under braking. (suspect shitty tires or alignment?)
3) front tire spin. Pulling out of any side street, even moderate throttle gets me tire spin off the front wheels. (again, suspect shitty tires).

All my previous Audis were pretty slow, and my wife's Q7 4.2 is so heavy it can barely get out of it's own way. So forgive me if the tire spin thing is normal, I would've just figured the diff would push power to the rear instead of letting the fronts spin.

All my signs are pointing to shitty tires and alignment but I wanted to see if anybody else had ever encountered this stuff. Control arm bushings look decent (30k miles) if a little dry. Tie rods were solid, no play there. Sway bar bushings and bolts were all tight.

Any other ideas?

[thirdgenab]

some times you need to have the steering Steering Angle Sensor G85 recalibrated, if the battry was disconected for any serios period of time. Should the Steering Angle Sensor G85 require replacement, follow applicable component "Replacement" as well as "zero - calibrate" procedure using VAS 5051/5051 in operating mode "Guided Fault Finding" .

[thirdgenab]

There is also a zero set at the bottom of the rack, I have seen come undone, that should be checked.