Rear Wheel Arch Cover rubbing

[ATinOf]

Here's an interesting dilemma

Both my rear wheel arches are sitting slightly away from the arch in the top dead centre position where they overlap. Hadnt noticed before but now one is rubbing on the damn tyre off side. Although its only polishing the outer edge of the tyre I dont want to leave it, tyres arent cheap and the squeek gets on your nerves when you know its there (I keep turning the stereo down to hear it!) I will be checking the suspension / body levels tomorrow to make sure nothings changed but it handles fine. Anyone had this before, any quick fixes? There doesn't seem to be a clip in that position and the covers seem to be kind of soft plastic rather than hard plastic like the front....

[Jim Haseltine]

Don't think they're plastic, they seem to be some sort of coated fibre composite rather like cardboard. I discovered a couple of missing mounting screws around the base of both of mine when I was recc'ing how I could replace the bump stops. Mine don't fit too closely at the tops of the arches, certainly not as tight as around the rest of the arches. Maybe at 10-11 years old they're starting to reach the end of their life. Note that there should be 2 fixing screws in the curved part of the cover at about 45 degrees up from horizontal (one front, one back) and towards the centre of the liner.

[RS6-T28RPH]

I had the same problem when changing the springs to KW's, most of the screws were there but the top was being pulled taught and dropping down as a result, the careful application of a hot glue gun managed to sort the job, not my best work but it got it off the ramp!

[Jim Haseltine]

Right - I've been under a wheel arch to change a bumpstop. The cover is compressed fibre and there should be 14 screws and two plastic clips. Now here's the rub and probably what your problem is - at the top of the arch there's a cut in the cover which is stapled together - just the one staple across the cut so that the edges butt together with hardly any overlap. Could be that the staple has given up.
Correction for my crappy memory. The overlap is actually about an inch - picture to follow when I've time.
The LH cover has 14 screws and 2 plastic clips, the RH cover has 12 screws and two plastic clips.
You are likely to need a load of N 908 214 01 plastic expanding nuts, I've had two let go and another couple don't feel too good. The plastic clips (4F0 825 429 A 'securing element t-bolt' 4 of them) can be reused if you've manged to get them off without breaking them, odd things, there's tab you have to lift so you can slide them off the t-bolt.

[Jim Haseltine]

The overlap

[drybeer]

Here's an interesting dilemma

Both my rear wheel arches are sitting slightly away from the arch in the top dead centre position where they overlap. Hadnt noticed before but now one is rubbing on the damn tyre off side. Although its only polishing the outer edge of the tyre I dont want to leave it, tyres arent cheap and the squeek gets on your nerves when you know its there (I keep turning the stereo down to hear it!) I will be checking the suspension / body levels tomorrow to make sure nothings changed but it handles fine. Anyone had this before, any quick fixes? There doesn't seem to be a clip in that position and the covers seem to be kind of soft plastic rather than hard plastic like the front....

Hi.

When we were selling the C6s brand new we then experienced a few owners coming in reporting this after around 5-6000 miles. In every case we traced it to the owner replacing the tyres with similar but not Audi "A0" rated items. The shape of the tyre shoulder is more rounded on the "A0" and doesn't rub.

However - I totally accept that 10-11 years have gone by since and perhaps the wheel arch linings are just ageing and become mis-shapen... But just to satisfy my curiosity - have you recently changed tyres prior to this issue manifesting itself?

[ATinOf]

Thanks for the info tips guys, although there aint no way im changing the MPS4S's out!!

I ended up with separating the overlapping bit a bit more with a new staple to force it back out towards the arch and some strategically placed double sided impact adhesive.
The staple probably would have been enough but while I was there I went with belt and braces.

All's good now, no squeeks.

[Doug_RS6]

Lowered with spacers and I had to trim the liners slightly