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hello, I have a 2014 A6 3LT Z51 that has 53,500 miles, I am original owner and bought in May of 2024. Mostly city/highway miles, no track use. Did just do 52.5 k service 3 weeks ago.
yesteday, noticed that the up shifting felt heavy and a little laggy in the morning. Was driving back to work after lunch and while accelerating to highway speed (about 70 mph) each upshift was followed by a 2 to 3000 over rev on the tach before the next gear up. In 6th gear the 6 on the hud and in the R corner went blank, then to D, then the service engine comes on and I no longer have any forward thrust, like it was in neutral. I coasted off highway and stopped. Car had no operational forward or reverse gears. Any gear with no gas would see the tach rev to 3000 or 4000, then back to idle in park. No fluid leaks. No sounds at any point.
towed car into dealer and they are looking at it. So far the day all their diagnostics show normal operation except the car still cannot be put in any gears and they are not sure what the problem is. Maybe computer? A little disconcerting and the torch red stingray on the flat bed wasn’t a good look! Any thoughts? Thanks!
Update - one week in I had not heard from the dealership about the transmission issue, so I called. Per the service advisor, their transmission technician ("with 40 years experience") cannot yet determine what the issue is ("everything checks out fine, but the issue still persists") and that "they may have to ask the big guys at GM about this, but he is not sure of that process and what would happen but he would find out". So, as of yet, 7 days in, no diagnosis and no indication of how long my 53,000 mile 2014 will be in the shop.
strange, that A6 has been a brick; solid, dependable and used in many other cars, sorry to hear you're a rare exception, not the way you want a car to be considered exceptional.….good luck and hope it's solved soon
Last edited by dbirdhouse1; 11-08-2018 at 07:39 PM.
Sounds like the shift cable broke.
When you shift between gears, is there any resistance, or does the shifter just glide freely up and down the channel?
No, there is no resistance at all using the actual gear shift moving to any position (P, R, N, D, or M) and no response with the paddles. With shift to R or D or M, there is the rev up of the engine to about 3000 rpm that then goes back down to idle when in P or N.
Starting to suspect a computer module issue given the tech at the dealer says he cannot see anything physically wrong with the transmission. May also explain why they say they are getting no codes that are pointing them toward a diagnosis. I would hope a tech with "40 years" experience would have checked that as a broken cable seems a reasonable diagnosis.
If it were the shift cable, there would be no effect when shifted, not the "rev up" reported. Also the LEDs by the shifter wouldn't change.
I also have a '14 A6 with 29,000 miles. It's my first auto, and I miss my manual shift I have in my '67 and had in my '95, '99, and '06. I'm very sensitive to any odd sounds or unusual shifting since the tranny is new to me. So far so good.
Dave
Last edited by DavePowell; 11-09-2018 at 07:28 PM.
I'd think it's internal to the trans itself. Generally, the little plastic cable piece breakage is pretty obvious (and one would hope to a mechanic w. 40 years experience). What worries me is that the mechanic has seemingly had no contact with the GM tech center or whatever it's called. Considering all the issues that have come up over the years, esp. this and the last gen, it's a little surprising to have zero contact with the engineers back in Detroit.
As Rebel said your car's still under warranty and that's a good thing. BTW when you had the 50K service done 3 weeks ago, did they drain or flush the trans at all? It is/does seem too much of a coincidence that they do a service on the entire car and suddenly it breaks. Hmmm....
So I called the dealer as it is now 2 weeks since my car broke down and I hadn't heard anything in the last week. My service advisor was not in so one of his colleagues kindly checked my ticket. He says that the filter was clogged and this "smoked the clutch" and that the transmission was going to need to be rebuilt and it would be at least another week. I don't know much about transmissions but I wonder why it took 2 weeks to figure that out and why they seemed so mystified by what was happening with it.
Spoke with my advisor this morning. He confirmed that they got the car in the shop (2 weeks after bringing it in that I think explains why they didn’t know what was happening and I get they have other cars to service but that just seems an awful long time to make no progress) and found that the filter was clogged and this did “smoke” the clutch per the tech and will require multiple parts, ring, torque converters, etc - he’s not sure yet all the parts they will need and so there is no projection for when this is going to be done. It is under warranty (glad it wasn’t a 2015 I guess) and he said that they have never seen anything like that before and “transmissions take a long time and we’ve had cars here 2 months before”. Great.
Im a bit unhappy with the whole experience and based on how this has gone so far I am starting to worry this is going to be the beginning of repeated problems with this and my confidence in this dealer is (maybe unfairly) low at this point. Fortunately I have another car to use right now so things could be a lot worse as obviously they don’t give you a loaner that is a C7 or actually any loaner at this dealer apparently.
I hate to make a comparison between the experience I have getting service at the local Mercedes dealer (work done fast, have a loaner that is the same or nicer vehicle than you you have, regular updates, and no excuses) and I know I pay a premium for that service, but between this and and the other Chevy dealer I brought my car into a couple of years ago for routine service that damaged my front fascia and then would not acknowledge or address it this has dampened my enthusiasm for the brand and I have like, many of you, been looking forward to the C8, but things like this make one wonder.
Pretty sure you just have a crap-tastic dealer. I have never had these experiences. Sewell Cadillac (my other car is a caddy) has a GM service department that is out of this world. Had my car in the shop for it's 75k transmission service. They noticed my tires were bad (I knew this and was going to get to Discount Tire ASAP). They replaced them for $100 less than Discount Tire had the last two swap outs. All past warranty work (very little surprisingly for a caddy?) was done super fast and all was approved. Nice loaner cars. It all seems very contradictory in that a place that sells luxury cars has a zero gouge service department.
Classic Chevrolet is pretty good. Nowhere near bad. But they could learn from some from the top tier dealerships.
The big disconnect seems to be price of car -vs- service quality. Those of us that drop $50,000 - $100,000 cars are a little spoiled. We are accustomed to world class service. The problem is we are buying $50,000 - $100,000 cars in places that also sell $18,000 cars. It is just a recipe for dissatisfaction based on what we are used to.
I think you’re right but it may also a cultural difference between a Chevy and a Mercedes dealership. After all, I have a GLE and a GLK 350 that were less expensive than my corvette was at $70k but the entire service experience is so much better at the Mercedes dealership. Part of that i imagine is that there are some far more expensive cars coming in all the time in the $100-200k range and the clientele that comes with that so they have to have the infrastructure (clean and modern waiting areas, loaners that are similar to what you drive, etc) and the service culture that is expected in place and those of us with less expensive cars benefit from that as well. I have yet to see a Chevy dealership in my neck of the woods in OK with anything even remotely close to having the infrastructure and service culture. This is why I cannot help but laugh when I see the talk on the C8 forums about the ME C8 being a $169k vehicle. Who would tolerate paying that for a car and getting (for what has been my typical) Chevy service experience? As annoyed as I am with my relatvely inexpensive stingray, I cannot help but wonder how id feel if I had a loaded Z06 or a ZR1! I do not think it necessarily has to be that way and I think it could be possible for GMto try to encourage that culture if that was deemed important, but I’m not sure that it is.
11-01-2018, 03:58 PM
2014 A6 Transmission Issueon
