I wanted to share my experience on here about an FEQ axle I purchased. I had a rip in my original CV boot on the drivetrain side of my front left axle which eventually caused it to fail (alot of clicking/some wobbling at high speeds). I knew that the CV axle was definitely the culprit (tires were good, had a recent alignment, wheel bearings are new), so I went ahead an ordered an FEQ replacement. It was the best deal I could find for my car, a 3.0 with quattro.
I removed the old axle, which isn't the easiest job but do-able, and my old one was shot. Lots of play and the boot was ripped really bad. I'm sure it had been slinging grease for thousands of miles. After removing the old one I took the FEQ unit out of the box and noticed the cap on the drivetrain side was zip-tied down. I thought it was weird but proceeded.
They include black grease which I filled the drivetrain side boot with, but the boot wouldn't remain closed. After removing the zip-tie, the cap on the end was also falling off. Luckily I always have zip-ties in my tool box so I zipped down the boot side and the cap by going through the hole where the bolts are supposed to go.
I removed the bolts that came with the kit to begin re-installation but they were slightly shorter than the OEM ones and were 8mm hex heads vs. 10mm 12-points. I read that the old OEM ones were single use so I re-attached everything with what came with the kit.
It was a huge pain trying to get all the holes to line up properly (remember I had to zip tie everything to keep it from falling apart). I was finally able to attach the bolts after fangling for about an hour, and torqued to spec according to the Bentley manual.
At this point I've worked on the car for over 2 hours in my driveway and felt good, the job is done right? Nope!
I turned the car on and immediately felt vibration on the driver's side that wasn't there before. Once I got it on the road and up to speed the entire thing felt extremely wobbly, so much so that I called a tow truck home.
The axle has over an inch of play if you pull it towards the spindle end. These things are crap.
I've ordered a new remanufactured OEM axle from Marty at Raxles.com, cool guy and they come with a lifetime warranty and all OEM replacement bolts/pieces. My local shop (NGP racing) highly recommended him for the replacements as he has made axles for their race vehicles and they have never had issues. He knows his stuff, and I'll see how good the axle is when it comes in next week.
The whole experience was frustrating, now I have to do the job twice, and my car is out of commission in the meantime. Luckily I have an old truck as a backup. I wanted to warn you guys not to go with FEQ, ever! I called the website I ordered them from for a return, which they accepted, but I have to pay return shipping. They even told me that they've had issues with FEQ as well.
FEQ is Chinese made and extremely poor quality. You can go cheap on some items but something as critical as an axle isn't one of them. I learned my lesson the hard way and wanted to give you guys a heads up so you don't have to go through the same experience.
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Originally Posted by Audibot
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