richx

Usually the car is very smooth when shifting. However, at times, especially when going up a steeper hill and slowly reducing speed as the car struggles more, there will be a "clunk" when the auto transmission finally down shifts from 5th to 4th. I can also duplicate this with manually shifting the tiptronic. Other down shifts are smooth. Has anybody else noticed anything similar?

Thanks!

sterto

i get it going in and out of third. i think if you search the archives, you'll see a fair number of similar complaints, although i don't recall that there was a single cause or resolution. mine actually preceded a total transmission failure (on the freeway in the evening rush hour, which was a real bummer) and replacement 6mos into ownership ... but i recall it being more of a nuisance (rather than a prelude to failure) for other posters.

richx

I had the 5th to 4th clunk since the car was new. I thought maybe it was the break-in period because then the clunk had disappeared, but it seems to come and go. After 3 years it is still there on and off. According to the dealership Audi wants to replace the auto transmission fluid with a special fluid and reprogram the auto trans cpu firmware for this different fluid. This fluid is apparently not standard to the A4. That sounds a little bit weird, and I don't think I want some non-standard fluid/firmware combo in my transmission... I test drove another same year A4 and it's 5th to 4th seemed perfectly smooth. It is annoying that the dealership can't tell me if this is normal or not. Seems like with all the sensors they should be able to tell if there is a solenoid that is sticking a little bit late or what is going on...