A8 Man

Hello everyone!

The shifting event between from 3rd to 4th gear is giving me worries, instead of locking up into 4th gear immediately it sort of stays "between gears" and after a few seconds it just drops into 4th gear, sometimes with a thump/shudder. This only happens when the car is ran cold in the morning as it goes the first time through the drive train, after this it starts shifting normally. The car has 260 000km on it.


I have read people fixing similar problems by changing the transmission fluid and filters. On another hand some transmissions broke shortly after changing the fluid. Some mechanics say you should only change the fluid if the transmission runs perfectly, otherwise changing it will destroy it.


Does anyone have suggestions on what I should be doing now? Has anyone experienced anything similar with their A8?

The car is Audi A8D2 year model 94 and 4-speed ZF 4HP24 automatic transmission.

Any advice will be appreciated!

fn_42

I'm pro fluid-change, not going to say it will fix your issue but it definitely might

I did the fluid on my S8's 5HP24 @160k to try to fix a few things, mostly a slip in 3rd and a shift flare (like you are seeing) from 3-4 and 4-5, all those problems are still there but at least I know I need a new transmission now =)

A8 Man

fm 42 much obliged. I dont have the space or right tools to change fluids myself unfortunately. Some workshops here offer quite different approaches to changing the fluid, which didnt sound quite reassuring. Shouldnt you be flushing the entire fluid out of the system, instead of just pour out what comes by opening the drain which is 5.5 liters or such??? Doing it like this will mix the new fluid with the old gunk, which I believe is not very healthy.

123quattro

Normally a fluid change is just dump what you get out of the pan and then refill.