Thought I'd start a thread as its very difficult to find any info on gearbox issues in this car online. Hopefully this can help others in the future.
I'd only owned the car a few months, fitted it with catless DPs and a stage 2 tune from Evolve coupled with a TCU tune from SRM. On my very first launch at the dragstrip, gearbox went into limp mode - wouldnt shift out of first gear. Turned car off and on again, gearbox functioned fine, but i noticed a shudder when moving off from a complete standstill. Interesting to note, the car did not shudder when it was in either sport, or manual mode - only comfort.
Spend many many months trying to diagnose the issues - thought it might have been the gearbox adaptation values, it wasnt. Tried transmission and diff flushes, nothing worked, and no one could really answer my questions - locally, or through forums/Facebook groups.
Last week I spoke to the team at Auto Trans Australia - they are well known here for building strong transmissions, especially the DSG and s-tronic stuff. He told me straight away what he believed the issue was. The ZF gearbox has a pump in it that provides pressure to the clutches, this has burnt out (or begun to burn out), and its not supplying adequate clamping pressure to those initial clutches. Eventually, it will completely fail and the shudder will become present in both sport and manual modes too.
Now unfortunately, you can't just replace the pump, and those burnt out clutch packs - the whole transmission needs to be overhauled. The plus side, is that in doing this, they add some more clutches, increasing its resiliency and hopefully help with getting that extra power and torque to the ground.
Total cost to me will be approx $8,800 ex GST (AUD$), not including shipping it from Perth to Sydney. Probably wouldnt be much change out of $11-12K by the time i'm finished.
I'll update this thread with the information i get out of ATA, and my experiences once i get the gearbox in.
Wish me luck
