Hi folks,
First time returning a lease, here an Audi Q4 etron (which I got an awful 1st lease on, but that’s another story…), and I have a question about what the lease-return folks will ding me for. I have some pretty bad wheel rash on 1 wheel (pics will make this very clear!). I’m obviously getting that refinished at a local shop + new tires.. however I’m on the fence about two other wheels.
One wheel has minor wheel rash (see thumb for scale) and the other doesn’t have wheel rash but does has a chipped/peeling clear coat patch about the size of a quarter (see pics).
My gut is to get the two with rash repaired and leave the chipped one for the AIM inspector.. is this a bad call? Local shop quoting $220 a wheel to refinish. Is it a good idea to do all 3 or will I be ok with just the 2 bad ones? Opinions valued.
Car is otherwise fine with very minor scratches / well-kept interior, and of course I plan to have the car washed, etc before inspection presentation.
Questionable wheels, first one:
This one has intact wheel machining, just a peeling clear coat patch.
Terrible gore wheel that obviously needs repair:
You should be fine. That’s wear and tear.
That curb rash with ripped tire they will 100% charge you for new tire and wheel repair. I suggest getting same tire off eBay and slightly sand that area down
Do you mean fine on the peeling one or fine on the small rash one (with thumb in pic) or fine on both ?
The ripped one is clearly horrible/needs the work done. I need 4x new tires anyways because of tread depth and they need to match brand and load rating (Quattro + EV) , so i’m throwing some new cheap Kumho’s on there (cue horrible joke about Kumho’s and the rim job.. ).
Last pic will need repair and replace tire. Just buy a used set off eBay and be done with it. Why spend money that you don’t need too
First two pics are fine
On my last SQ5 I had curb rash similar to (if not longer) than the last pic on 2 wheels and and it was just normal wear and tear, no charge.
That seems pretty generous , it’s a reasonably bad gash and chunks out of the tire .. I’d be kinda shocked if that passed that ?
I was surprised as well, I just dug through and found a pic of my worst wheel. Not the best pic but you can see the rash is at least twice as long and where I tried to clean it up.
Keep in mind once you replace your gashed tires it won’t look near as bad or noticeable, ditto if you can file down slightly the sharp rough edges on the wheel.
In any event your first two pics should definitely be just normal wear and tear, no charge, the last one is 50/50 whether they ding you or not based on the one deeper gash.
If it were me I wouldn’t fix any of them, certainly not at $220/wheel, even if they do ding you for the last one it should be less than that.
You will def get charged for the tire.
I had the AIM inspection with only the one terrible rim repaired , and 4 new tires because they were all going to fail tread depth testing . Inspector said I probably made the right call , zero charges as it is, but said the rim pic I showed him would’ve possibly been a new wheel charge because Audi is picky about gashes into the metal for some reason . He said don’t ever bother with repairing “regular” (not deep) larger wheel rash though because it’s currently only a $50 wear charge max per wheel for audi leases and has been for some time as long as they don’t look deep enough to need a new wheel.
I might’ve got away with it he said , but borderline between a new wheel or a $50 charge based on what he saw. The recut wheel was truly pristine OEM quality , he couldn’t even tell… and he found a lot of other little things .
I guess I took a gamble and I’ll never know which way it landed .. at least I only paid for 1 wheel fix though .
