Thomas M.

Greetings...

I've posted before about my clutch replacement... and the saga continues.

I picked my car up today for the 3rd, or maybe 4th time that my dealership has looked at my shift linkage since they replaced my clutch... (and in order to do that, removed my transmission from my car).

They can't get it right. I have a UUC short shifter, and at this point I can't get it right either. My shifter has been in the car since ~5k and I'm at 35k now, and I've never had any problems. They took my car apart to put a new clutch in, and now my car won't hold 2nd, 4th, or 6th gears. I can get the car into gear, but on deceleration or acceleration the car has a ~50% chance of poping out of gear.

So, they replaced some parts today, including the shift mechanism, but they swapped my short shifter over to the new parts. (Shocking after my experience with my RS4 clutch at this dealership...)

So despite the new parts, my car is still in the bad state it was in before. 2nd, 4th, and 6th are unreliable.

I haven't gotten in writing exactly what they replaced today (getting the paperwork Monday), nor what they want to do, but.. the general idea of what my service adviser told me today is... They want to rebuild my transmission. Now, my car is a 08/99 build time, and has *never* had any tranny problems.

My car was in a few weeks ago for replacement of the gauge cluster, and I *suspect* that it was abused while it was in their care. What led me to believe this is, the shift linkage in my PARKED car, was misadjusted so 1 and 2nd gear was no longer avaliable. I spoke to the service manager about this and he assured me that nothing of that sort could have happened. I'm not 100% convinced.

I already had the appointment to have my clutch repaired, so I allowed them to do that work.

Since none of the tech's at this dealership are rated to work on my tranny, they're going to "import" a tech to work on it. I'm going to make a call on Monday to have my car looked at by another Audi dealership, and I'm seriously considering having an independant mechanic I trust look at it also.

The thing I guess I really want answered is... My service advisor mentioned a noise when engaging first gear. When I have the little foam pad out of my shifter area, 1st gear makes a similar sound to reverse in my car. Sort of a growl, 2nd-6th make no such noise. He mentioned my car needing at LEAST a new 1st gear. Now, the question in my mind is... How could a S4 6sp tranny be worn/abused/broken in such a way that the lower gears are not reliable but the upper gears are?! And furthermore, will replacing
1st gear solve that?! hmm.

I remember it taking a while to get my short shifter adjusted (maybe 30 minutes), but... we never had the car pop out of gear as a result of the shifter being mis-adjusted. Any advice there?

Sorry for the long post, any advice is welcome...

-Thom

PeteW

I would ask the service advisor which Audi dealership they would like to send your car to (where they can service the transmission), and get the car to that location. Sounds like the tranny needs allot of work... in the 2K+ range...