I have an 01 A6 2.7T with about 88,000 miles on the clock. I have the APR stage 1 ECU and was considering a TCU upgrade as well. The tranny shifts a little slow for me and it bugs me that I cannot manually downshift it into first gear. A couple people that I have talked to say not to do the TCU upgrade as it will lead to tranny failure. I would appreciate some input from anyone out there who has run this TCU upgrade. Thanks.

 

well if that is the case that the GIAC tip chip leads to tranny failure, then there is a slightly more moderate approach that you might try. i've done it on my 2000 4.2. what it is is to reprogram the tcu to the sport programing. all it entails is hooking up a vag tool to the car, going to the transmission control module, and changing the soft coding from 00002 to 00032. it bumps the line pressure up by 2 psi and also keeps the tranny in lower gears longer. it drops the shift time by a little bit. definitely better than stock but not as extreme as the tip chip.