Manually Shifting A4
Thread Starter
Racer
Joined: Jan 2005
Posts: 311
Likes: 1
From: Arkansas
Manually Shifting A4
Sometimes, to keep the engine in the powerband (or just to hear the exhaust) I mannually shift my A4 and, when driving in conditions under 45 mph, I will not shift into OD. Does mannualy shifting the A4 shorten the life of the tranny? It just seems like my engine and tranny are lugging hard when the TC locks up and I accelerate without triggering the downshift.
Last edited by jhiiidoc; May 16, 2007 at 08:01 PM. Reason: needed to subscribe to the threat
H E L L O anyone out there ?
Melting Slicks
Joined: Sep 2004
Posts: 3,178
Likes: 13
From: N. County/San Diego
Since I canyon carve and was concerned about this I called RPM Transmission for their input, they said manual shifting an A4 is not an issue providing you use commom sense, ie: banging the rev limiter, power-shifting, etc.
The only thing they said to avoid is flooring while in overdrive at freeway speeds (say aprox 70mph) which results in down-shift from 4th to 2ed, (apparently extreme shock to the trans) instead they recommended down-shifting into 3rd before flooring it so that it down-shifts only one gear!
Since these transmissions run hot even in stock form I/others recommend running a trans cooler, heat kills and a cooler is cheap insurance.
If you do a search you will find several threads on the subject.
RTR
The only thing they said to avoid is flooring while in overdrive at freeway speeds (say aprox 70mph) which results in down-shift from 4th to 2ed, (apparently extreme shock to the trans) instead they recommended down-shifting into 3rd before flooring it so that it down-shifts only one gear!
Since these transmissions run hot even in stock form I/others recommend running a trans cooler, heat kills and a cooler is cheap insurance.
If you do a search you will find several threads on the subject.
RTR
Le Mans Master
Joined: Aug 2006
Posts: 9,987
Likes: 25
From: If opportunity doesn't knock, build a door. South West Florida / Livin' The Dream
St. Jude Donor '12
I also have an A4 and had some of the same questions last year. After reading several posts about it the consensus seemed to be that it's fine to do. The only caution seemed to be with downshifting. the logic was that brake parts are cheaper than transmission parts.
