S-tropic - new sump, seal and oil .. night and day!

Hi, I’d posted recently about noises from underneath, dreading S-tronic / mech .
Turned out it was suspension arms / bushes. Got those replaced now no noises.

But garage noticed gearbox sump oil leak. So got new seal, new sump and gearbox oil change.

Night and day now!

Totally smooth, no big jerks going from P/N to D or R, way smoother all round . Still a slight jerk sometimes from 1st to 2nd , but seems like that is pretty common at low speed. And R used to disengage sometimes.

Plus now S mode goes to 7th gear above 75, it never did this before !

Strange thing is I had S-tronic service- oil and filter change by Audi when I got it 18 months ago , and there was little or no difference to the smootheness of it, just put it down to a 90k car , know S-tronics can be a touch lumpy or notchy.

So has the full sump off got rid off all the crud compared to a normal gearbox oil change and made a huge difference ?
Or are Audi scrimping and not fully replacing the oil on their services?
Audi’s S-tronic service is cheaper than Indy’s quote 225 vs around 275

I’m going to call garage -AutoHaus outside edinburgh tomorrow and see if they did anything else, all that comes to mind is a TCU update .
Great service and chat from their guys.

I can maybe suggest to anyone with an older lumpy S-tronic , get the sump taken off , maybe replaced and new oil, filter .
£340 from Indy -or £380 from Audi for new sump, seal & oil. Well worth it .

If anyone else has done this, like to know their experiences too.

Cheers

Dippy said:

Do you know if the 90k s-tronic oil service was the 3rd as it should have been, or the 2nd or even 1st? For sure there is a chance that the dealer did not flush the oil fully and so the new oil would have been mixed with some old. There have been plenty of forum reports from people that their s-tronic is smoother after an oil service so it is likely a genuine issue.

Click to expand...

Thanks, aye not sure how many it’s had before me, first thing I did 18 months ago was get box serviced by Audi to make sure, but like I said was little or no difference.
Log book show all major an minor services bar box services kept up to date by mainly Audi. Also after some phoning to Audi HQ it appears it’s had piston rings replaced by Audi, but they don’t keep full records of this !
Audi’s records aren’t as good you you imagine.
And they forgot to stamp book after my box service, had to take it back up to get stamped, where they then stamped the ‘no’ box !! So some of the previous no stamps could be a yes for box service.
So I would think it’s had at least one before me, as seems fairly well serviced for everything else. But possibly missed one by second owner.

Anyway called garage, and they said that sump off and full drain will make a difference compared to just the normal oil change service. As it gets all the crud out completely.
Thinking I should do this every 2 years to keep it good.

apache24uk said:

Out of interest did you just get the bushes changed or the arms changed over? What was the cost?

Need to get my done soon and some garages said its easier to change the whole arms over rather than just do bushes

Click to expand...

The bushes are bonded to the arms, I asked to see if just bushes can be changed was a no.
Cost was
each Front curved arm £84
each Front Straight arm £84
each Ball joint £34
labour 3hours - £150

I got 2 straight arms and 1 curved replaced. Feels solid again , big difference from the creaky clunky way it was.