On the take up from standing start point I’m mystified.

I find it’s not standing starts that are the problem, but when you haven’t quite stopped. As you’re slowing, it tries to stay in a high gear for too long, so if you’re almost stopped and then want to go quickly it wants to shift down first. Once you’re actually stopped, it drops to first and it’s ready to go. Putting it in S helps a bit. I’ve got the 8 speed auto (not DSG) on mine, but I suspect it’s similar on the DSG.

I’ve got a DSG box on my orange toy, I bought it new, I’ve used Sport once and that was by accident.
The paddles are useful if you are in Auto because if you flip the downshift it reverts to manual and then if you squirt the throttle it drops either 1 or 2 gears down .. once you back off the loud peddle it reverts back to Auto, but I have to say I honestly can’t remember the last time I used the flappy paddles. The Auto is just sooooo smoooooooth maaannn.

Enjoy your new car.

I just find mine very snatchy on take up, 180ps through the front wheels perhaps doesn’t help. A less than delicate start just results in spin/traction control confusion.

But with the Quattro system Audi have got something absolutely spot on…fantastic.

Ps. 2 wheel drive now but had Quattro in the past

I just find mine very snatchy on take up, 180ps through the front wheels perhaps doesn’t help. A less than delicate start just results in spin/traction control confusion

Golf GTI Edition 40s have up to 260, so not sure it’s a power thing.

They’ve definitely got better over the years, I’ve driven 2008, 2012 and 2015 variants all in Golf GTIs/R32s, and they’re smoother on the newer ones for sure. I love mine (2012 Golf GTI), wouldn’t go back lightly. Not tried any of the 7 speed ones though, so it’s a bit of a moot point.

Agree with everyone else that D is for virtually everything, paddles for shifting down, S for sounding good.

As others have said the paddles don’t get much use after the novelty wears off. In my case I didn’t use then enough to remember which was up and which was down, easier to push the stick across and use that. You get used to pulling way, there’s a neck to getting the revs up without engaging the gear too early, I had a old PD turbo diesel and the lag combined with the box was fine once you adjusted. I do less town driving now so I’ve got back to manual.

A teeny blip of the throttle when you release the brake peddle is the best/smoothest was to eliminate any lag. I sometimes get it if I roll up to a roundabout at about 10mph, and nothing’s coming, so pull off into the roundabout .. on occasion a bit of lag, but a small blip of the throttle eliminates it. Takes a little bit of thinking because you don’t want to dab it, just small blip.

pdw – I suspect nail/head interface. I tend to go for 5mph or stop and try to do nothing in between.

The other one for lack of speed away is the stop-start. There’s a magic point in the brake pedal travel where it will restart without creeping but it never feels ‘right’ holding it there for more than a second – like it’s itching to go. Glad it has an off switch!

My A6 Quattro was excellent in snow on stock tyres, up/down our steep unswept road and through various snow storms in Switzerland, even up quite a steep track under a ski lift in resort. Whether the colder and icier conditions I expect you have in Scotland will test the rubber more I don’t know. I’d be quite surprised if you wore the tyres out in leas than a year although mine was a but heavy on fronts. Can’t you flog the originals fo a local tyre place or on ebay ?

My A6 Quattro has just got 24,000 out of a set which I find quite impressive for a big heavy car with a V6 3.0 turbo diesel engine.

My wife’s Mazda 3 gets about 12,000 out of each front set. 😯

My A3 got 45,000 miles out of the first set of tyres

Good news on the tyre wear, sound about double that of my current 5 Tourer…

I’ll be using the as supplied factory tyres till they wear out, but it sounds like they still work ok in snow and ice with the 4wd setup.

Whether the colder and icier conditions I expect you have in Scotland will test the rubber more I don’t know.[/I]

First snow of the winter for us (Scottish Borders) today and while the xdrive on my new car (BMW’s Quattro copy) means I’ve no problem getting traction on the slippery stuff to go forward, almost foot wide low profiles means its a bit ‘hairy’ braking 🙂

We did 18,000 miles a year and changed less than once a year although mostly dual carriageway/motorway type miles. Fronts did wear faster perhaps monitor and do a switch front/rear.

Good news on the tyre wear, sound about double that of my current 5 Tourer…

It might have been even more, perhaps even 26 or 27k. I have had it just over three years and have only just done them and it has 29k on it now.

And I don’t always drive like an angel either 😉

Fronts did wear faster perhaps monitor and do a switch front/rear.

Mine is the Quattro version and all four wore almost perfectly equally (although they did wear dreadfully on the inside, but that is a story from another thread...)

I use my 7spd DSG something like this-

D- most of the time
S- anytime I’m on a decent driving road and feel like hooning about
Paddles- properly twisty country roads when I’m being a bit of a dick

It is a bit slow on the uptake sometimes but it’s not so bad. Generally pretty happy with it, though it’d not necessarily be my first choice for the type of car it’s in (small hot hatch) I suspect it’ll suit a A6 luxo barge well.

Picked up my new A4 with S-tronic gearbox at the start of December. It then failed with less than 100 miles on the clock 😕

Given a loan A5 with the 8 speed multitronic, utterly terrible and I started to get really worried the gearbox in the A4 was going to be just as bad when I got it back. Needn’t have worried, the 7 speed s-tronic really is a cracking gearbox. I like the way you can override the gearbox with the paddles if you wish but it will then go back to auto if you don’t touch them again or you can move the selector across and have it in full time manual using either the selector to change up and down or the paddles.

I suspect it’ll suit a A6 luxo barge well.

Apart from the fact it takes ages to pick up and with the A6 Barge being about 48 feet long it takes three weeks to pull into/across traffic…

My wife’s car (Seat people carrier) has DSG. It’s great. Usually, we stick it in drive and forget about it.

I only use the paddles when overtaking and wanting to drop a gear in preparation (not often) and also in snow when I want to force a higher gear to avoid wheel spin.

That’s pretty much it.

johndoh – am I right in thinking yours has the multitronic box rather than the 7 speed S Tronic Quattro ?

johndoh – am I right in thinking yours has the multitronic box rather than the 7 speed S Tronic Quattro ?

No, it is the S-Tronic box. Multi-tronic isn’t available in the 3.0l V6 as it can’t handle the torque apparently.

ah, ok, I was ‘hoping’ that the bad experiences you have had with yours was due to a different box. Is it something to do the the bigger engine ? A lot of folks on here with the S-Tronic one and 2.0 diesel seem to like them..

It is a known issue with them (you just need to Google) but clearly it bothers some people more than others.

My brother has had a few autos and has recently bought an Ibiza FR with the same box and he agrees with me that there is a delay that he hasn’t experienced in other cars but he isn’t unduly bothered about it.

Ohh, and to add to that, I recently had a newer A5 as a courtesy car and the lag isn’t as bad as on mine (63 plate). I spoke to the dealership and they sad that the newer boxes have been slightly retuned/remapped to improve them so if you are getting a new car it probably won’t be a problem.

thanks for info. It is my first auto so I won’t know any different 🙂

I’d say the one thing its weak with is cross camber/uphill reversing and even then only when you’re trying to sneak back those last 2cm (trying to get boot tight to wall/short spaces). I think it’s a product of how the clutch engages so gently at a crawl. If you have delicate left foot skills i still think a manual does this so much better (although I’m getting better with the dsg the more I do it).

I can confirm this weakness in reversing uphill, it is very evident especially now as our steep driveway is quite icy. The car is q version with winter tyres.

On mine, if I let it roll forwards down the hill the clutch catches it (assuming it’s not too steep) and the car will creep backwards – even if it feels like it won’t.