Quote:
Originally Posted by
Dmax 
To fully assess wheel damage one needs to unmount the tire from the wheel(s) suspected of causing the vibration, usually the front ones. The dealer's tech probably did not bother to do that and gave up after trying to balance them on his machine a couple of times. As I mentioned above, if the wheel is bent it may be impossible to balance properly.
If you get 4 new wheels and tires you will solve the problem but you should only need to replace one or two wheels that are severely bent. You didn't tell me how many miles you had on your tires but if they have plenty of thread left and no damage I would leave them alone.
What the service girl said sounds like BS. Audi wheels are no easier or harder to balance than most aftermarket wheels provided the wheels are not damaged. All brand name tires should balance just fine.
There is usually no reason to go to the dealer for work this simple, especially since they charge around $120/hour in labor costs. I would take the car to an independent tire shop that sells/installs custom wheels and have them dismount the tires and inspect the wheels and the tires for damage.
So just to close off my saga. Wife got a flat tire on Friday, took the car today and figured I'd get 5 new tires and see if the shaking would go away. The spare (the flat my wife got) was actually bent/cracked. Do not know if it was like that prior to her getting the flat, but I would assume the dealer would have noticed it when I took the car to get balanced. The good news is that the car is running smoothly now with the new tires (potenza's). The bad news is that I need to buy a wheel so that I can have a spare and 5 minutes after driving it away, the Anti-Lock Braking system light came on so now I need a trip to the dealer
