Hi All,


I recently started to notice the gears were not working as smoothly as usual, they would change up slightly higher than normal. I took it to a garage who ran the full diagnostics on the machine and it showed no faults, the injectors were a little imbalanced but nothing major.
Yesterday it started to get a lot worse. when driving in auto it changes no problems up to 4th gear then wont select 5th. I would have to select 5th using the paddles. The problem is when I select it manually, after 8 secs it takes to go into full auto again and as soon as I touch the accelerator it drops down to 4th its as if it thinks its too high a gear to be in. the same is true of 6th gear, I select it manually and as soon as it goes into auto it drops to 5th. This is at 80mph on the motorway so it should stay in the higher gear without issue.
The gears work perfectly in manual and perfectly in auto up to 4th gear including downshift.
I had initially thought it was an exhaust issue thinking the gasses werent getting out properly and therefore the car over revving however when the fault codes were run a full check on the exhaust was done.
I know very little about cars so have scared the bejesus outta myself by reading about megatronics and things today, a bit like googling "ive got a headache, whats wrong with me" .
The car is a 2008 2.0 (170) TDI S Tronic/ DSG (dont know the difference)
108000 miles and has been serviced at 105000 including the gearbox oil change. I got it at 50000 and untill then was always done by audi.
Does anyone have any thing other than an expensive megatronics suggestion?
Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Has the transmission fluid and filter been changed recently? If not, I'd do that and see if the issue goes away. If so, I'd do another fluid and filter change to as much of the old fluid out of it as I could. It is impossible to flush the fluid out of ANY automatic transmission without removing it and draining the torque converter, so a couple of fluid changes in a short time period would certainly get as much as possible. Blauparts (as sponsor of this site) sells fluid change kits with all you'll need to do it. BUT I do not recommend a novice attempt it. It's a straightforward process that any decent shop can do.

Regular transmission fluid and filter changes (at least every 3 years) just makes good since and is crucial to keeping the transmissions in good shape. Rebuilding one those beasts is just about as expensive as the flippin car is worth most of the time.