Car is a 2012 TFSI Avant with ~8000 miles on the clock.
I had this error on Sunday, about 10 miles into my drive home (with ~20miles still to go - pouring rain and the wife + my three very young kids in the car!): "Gearbox malfunction, you may continue driving. Limited functionality."
... which then changed to a warning triangle on the DIS and the letter R crossed out and the text "Reverse not available" in the more info section.
I thought it was clutch at first, since the car seemed to be surging and then slowing down every time it changed gears... then I realised that it was only allowing gears 1-3-5-7 (ie. half the DSG gearbox)
Workarounds (very short term):
1) driving: I was able to drive home fine, steady cruising was easy, but town traffic was a mess: had to put it in Sport and allow it to rev to ~6500rpm in 1st, so when it then shifted to 3rd it wasn't "reaching too far".... otherwise it was changing up and pushing the revs down to ~500rpm.... which might be okay in a diesel, but the supercharged V6 petrol needs around 750-900rpm to pull smoothly....
2) parking/reversing: in true "IT Crowd"/IT support style, if I switched the car off and back on again, I could select reverse for a minute or two.... enough to slot the car back into my driveway when I got home.
I Googled the alert when I got home.... it's a common issue for the 2010-2012 S4 (same engine + gearbox as mine).... lots of threads about a software update and/or mechatronics, plus a few (US) threads with the same issues for the A6 3.0 TFSI.
I popped the car into the local Audi: despite saying they could only guaranteed me a diagnostics session in 14days, they said they would try to get somebody to at least do a first look ASAP - and were able to get that done in <24h!!
Fortunately I had mentioned that the mechatronics were a known issue on the <2012 DSG for the 3.0TFSI, even at <10k miles.... as they confirmed that it is the mechatronics - Audi have indicated that they will cover the cost, despite the car being (1 month) out of manufacturer's warranty!! TBC on the details of that, but fingers crossed - really decent of them to pick that up, if they do!!
I had this error on Sunday, about 10 miles into my drive home (with ~20miles still to go - pouring rain and the wife + my three very young kids in the car!): "Gearbox malfunction, you may continue driving. Limited functionality."
... which then changed to a warning triangle on the DIS and the letter R crossed out and the text "Reverse not available" in the more info section.
I thought it was clutch at first, since the car seemed to be surging and then slowing down every time it changed gears... then I realised that it was only allowing gears 1-3-5-7 (ie. half the DSG gearbox)
Workarounds (very short term):
1) driving: I was able to drive home fine, steady cruising was easy, but town traffic was a mess: had to put it in Sport and allow it to rev to ~6500rpm in 1st, so when it then shifted to 3rd it wasn't "reaching too far".... otherwise it was changing up and pushing the revs down to ~500rpm.... which might be okay in a diesel, but the supercharged V6 petrol needs around 750-900rpm to pull smoothly....
2) parking/reversing: in true "IT Crowd"/IT support style, if I switched the car off and back on again, I could select reverse for a minute or two.... enough to slot the car back into my driveway when I got home.
I Googled the alert when I got home.... it's a common issue for the 2010-2012 S4 (same engine + gearbox as mine).... lots of threads about a software update and/or mechatronics, plus a few (US) threads with the same issues for the A6 3.0 TFSI.
I popped the car into the local Audi: despite saying they could only guaranteed me a diagnostics session in 14days, they said they would try to get somebody to at least do a first look ASAP - and were able to get that done in <24h!!
Fortunately I had mentioned that the mechatronics were a known issue on the <2012 DSG for the 3.0TFSI, even at <10k miles.... as they confirmed that it is the mechatronics - Audi have indicated that they will cover the cost, despite the car being (1 month) out of manufacturer's warranty!! TBC on the details of that, but fingers crossed - really decent of them to pick that up, if they do!!
