I went out and drove it around.....OMG, the wheel is absolutely incredible.

I had not tried tiptronic yet, and I did try to recode the TCU to 00032, but it didn't take it, had 00102 (stock S8 coding) instead.

So I figured I should try tip....so I click the steering wheel switches while in drive.....guess what??? Tiptronic ON DEMAND!!

It shifts into tiptronic while in "D" or "S" and if you don't make a shift for 10-15 seconds....it shifts back from tiptronic to D or S......what a bonus!!!

Does the 03 S8 have tip on demand? I would think it does....somebody please advise. If it doesn't, let me know, and I will advise how to recode to make this happen....if possible. Should be the same for any 02 or 03 A8/A8L with MFSW......let me know.

If you want to scroll through your cell phone book, you just hit the button on the left and scroll up and down.....it shows up in the DIS, you can scroll fast. Let's say you stop at "Gabor" and hit "cancel" from the wheel, the next time you activate it (without resetting the ignition), it brings up "Gabor" first. So it remembers.

If you are in "Presets" on the RNS-E, when you hit the up/down buttons, it goes from preset to preset, if you hit it when in radio mode, it scans to the next station.

The thing is amazing.

However, the S8 steering wheel feels much better in your hand.....

I bought the CAN + Tiptronic control module from an 02 A8, when I received it, the coding was 00012.

Here is what each number does:

First number - always 0

Second number - radio on CAN bus or not (0 = no CAN, 1 = CAN)

Third number - I believe it is language (leave at 0)

Fourth number - tiptronic or no tiptronic (0 = no tiptronic wheel, 1 = tiptronic wheel)

Fifth number - radio, telephone & voice recognition (1 = radio, 2 = radio + telephone, 5 = radio + telephone + voice recognition)


I thought it was odd that the controller came with a 00012 code and it was a CAN device, doesn't the Symphony II talk over the infotainment CAN bus? So I checked the wiring diagrams and you can see that the Symphony II talks to the MFSW control module via a single wire, not over the infotainment CAN bus when the second number in the code is "0". That made sense.

<img src="http://www.audipages.com/upgrades/steering5.JPG">



I did not hook that wire up to my RNS-E because it's a CAN device (and there is no input on the RNS-E for this), but obviously 02 and 03's came from the factory with that wire installed and coded to talk over that wire vs. the CAN bus. I would think you could recode the MFSW module to 01012 so it will talk over the CAN wires that are part of the installed wiring harnesses on the 02 and 03's:



<img src="http://www.audipages.com/upgrades/steering6.JPG">

Once it's coded for CAN, I think this is what caused the tip on demand to start working. You can see the MFSW control module is the device that sends the signal to the TCM to shift. On my 97 tiptronic mod, you had to enable tiptronic by moving the shifter, then the "tip up" and "tip down" provided a ground path signal to shift.

When doing the mod, I took the tiptronic wires from the steering wheel and used them as inputs into the MFSW control module. When doing the engineering, I noticed that it did not need "tip ground", but used "tip up" and "tip down".....see my note on T51 pin 2:

<img src="http://www.audipages.com/upgrades/sm_IMG_1696.JPG">

The MFSW has two pins that are ground connections, and I figure it uses this along with internal software to enable the TCM to tiptronic then to shift, and then to put it back in D or S after a time out period.

So try recoding to a 01012 or whatever your current coding is, but change the second number from a 0 to a 1.

Mine is coded to 01015 because I have the radio, telephone and voice recognition. I can now dial by voice command along with a lot of other voice commands.

...I landed a walnut/leather tip 4 spoker with MFSW (some guy in italy sold it to me last summer; was in his B6 cabrio) and I retrofitted it to the C5 -- but I had to swap out the inner "black box" from the C5 wheel..and the wiring.

The bonus for the walnut/leather wheel is that it is extremely thick...almost slightly thicker than the 3 spoker. :) But no heated function...so that's the compromise. Oh well.

-Ted

thing I dont like about it is you do not know which gear the auto is in when you down shift with the tip controls on the wheel, but its nice to not have to move gear shifter over to the right.Now you need rs6 paddels !!!!!!!!!!!!!.

Is there a different coding for the Symphony that would disable the non-Can bus signal?

What does the second digit represent?

For what it's worth, the radio is coded 00265.

I am trying to figure out why yours wouldn't do it considering it has the same or newer MFSW control module. I had my TCU coded to 02/03 for a while, but then realized that the 01 engine has a different code from 02/03.

<img src="http://www.audipages.com/upgrades/TCU12.JPG">

It wouldn't be anything in the steering wheel, or at least I don't think it would be.

the only drawback is that it is possible to hit one of the up- or down-shifts by mistake. Paddles would be less likely to shift by mistake, but then there would be no multi-function.

If only they made a multi-function paddle-sift wheel that would fit a C5...Oh well...

Is it possible to get tip on demand in my S8 -01 (FBG gearbox &amp; AVP engine)?
My gearbox softcode is now 00101.