whyjay91

5800 miles on it and I was driving my wife and my 7 month old daughter to my folks' place. I went through an intersection and "ding" a gear icon showed up on the dash and it stated there was a gearbox malfunction: you may continue with limited driving or something of the like. Problem was, I had ZERO gearsand had about 35 mph of momentum to make a quick judgement in traffic to coast into a nearby parking lot. Tried all kinds of things to get it to move and had no gears even after letting it sit for a while. Had the wife and kiddo picked up while I called Audi Roadside. A guy showed up an hour later with a flatbed, pulled my wife's Q5 onto the platform via tow hitch, and dropped it off at our local dealer.

Since it was a Friday, they diagnosed on a Saturday, ordered the new mechatronics unit on Monday (in the transmission and you replace it by dropping the tranny pan), and replaced it on Wednesday. Nice to have a loaner but now my wife is concerned this might happen again while she's driving with the baby but on a much busier stretch of road, etc... Man, these Audis will be the end of me.

Good news is that it runs great now and since some kind of RVU update, it seems like turbo lag isn't as bad. Before failure, it really gave no sign of issue as the Q drove and shifted very well and smoothly.

D_Frost

Wow... that is scary... glad that you and your family were ok... so did the dealer say anything about the cause of this failure?

Coolieman1220

is this the overly shifty 8 speed unit with the 2.0t?

the one everyone raves about?

whyjay91

Thanks D Frost. Was a strange occurrence and surprising to say the least. Q was running like a top, pulling 24 actual mpg easily with all city driving. The shifts on this zf 8 spd were flawless until it happened. What was strange was that I saw a ton of posts from 3yrs ago on the exact same mechatronics failure on their outstanding DSG's. I chatted in depth with the very known mechanic and he'd said this was an extremely rare issue post-2010. I'll chalk it up to bad luck unless it happens again. =/ I do have to say the new flash, which we didn't need, made shifts very pointed and crisp. Will update you all as we proceed.