[MMMZON]

I tried looking for a thread that would match the issue I am observing, but no luck. It is not a hesitation in acceleration, but rather weird behavior of the transmission in the morning, when the car is cold. When cold (in the morning) and shifting up (for example, from 3 to 4), rpms drop (numbers are just an example) from 2000 to 1500, then go up to 1700 and then back down to 1400 and then up to 1600 and then stabilize and go up in a normal fashion. This behavior does result in a little bit of shudder when accelerating, obviously.

When the engine is warm, the behavior is mostly gone.

I am running Malone tune stage II right now. I flashed the engine back to stock and the behavior is not there. I flash back to modded software and the issue comes back.

Seems like a bad tune?

 

[MMMZON]

Darn, forgot about the detail - 3.0 TDI 2016

 

[MMMZON]

What did Malone have to say about this?

Nothing so far, I did let them know but have not received any feedback to date. It does seem like everything points to the tune itself, but wanted to know if anybody has seen similar behavior on similar engine / tune

 

[MMMZON]

I do have my the gear display mod. The gear holds, and it does not waffle between higher and lower gears, i.e., the next selected gear stays in place. I see that happen both in D and S modes alike, but mostly only on cold engine.

Extra power and torque could be causing the transmission to shift sooner but then not be able to support the higher gear.

- this might be the reason why I do not see it when I take the tune off and the engine is back to stock but no changes are made to TCU. I am just wondering why I started see that happen only right now that night temperatures are above freezing.

 

[MMMZON]

A little shy of 14k at this time. I bought it with 10k on it about 4.5 months ago.

 

[MMMZON]

Thanks for all the feedback. It seems like I just need to watch it over the next few days and if it continues as it is, perhaps go to Tune Level 1 if Malone makes it work somehow and see if that takes the problem away.

 

[MMMZON]

I will try to make a video recording of the initial morning run to show the behavior. I only noticed it by accident myself ...

 

[MMMZON]

Just a thought, you could reset the throttle to see if that makes a difference. That is a 30 second experiment.

It seems that @Troystg gets the main prize on this one. A cold reset today in the morning and it seems all is back to normal. Now I am going to be baffled as to what caused the issue in the first place. After the tune was done, I did the throttle reset as instructed and all was fine.

 

[MMMZON]

sooo ... all was very good in the morning and behaving as expected. The car was stopped for ~6 hrs at work, and the issue is back. Same behavior, no change.

I also noticed for the very first time when I pulled into the garage that the exhaust had metal cracking sounds, likely due to heat. It might be that the air temperature is just high today, but I have never heard the metal expansion / compression sounds before. Is that normal?

I'm sorry for all the lame questions but trying to understand what changed between then and now ...

 

[MMMZON]

Fair point ... the question is what to do with it? I do drive light on the pedal, especially since there is more than enough power to push the car around without revving up unnecessarily.

 

[MMMZON]

I also have not observed this issue before. It started pretty much last week when night temperatures finally started coming out of below freezing point.

 

[MMMZON]

An update - heard back from Malone team and as expected - it is not something they come across frequently. I will update the thread when I know more.

 

[MMMZON]

Yeah, I can relate - I am super sensitive to pressure differences and check is quite regularly (at least once a week). I am also terrible with wheel calibration and local tire shop does see me quite regularly to get the wheels calibrated and balanced.

The issue I have might be in my head, but today I will get the video done to show exactly what happens. The car was sitting out of the garage all night so it should be prime for the presentation of the issue. Maybe all I need is to drive it a bit more aggressively - since the tune was done, I was super light on accelerator given all the extra torque and the way the car handles now.

 

[MMMZON]

so I see - I went the TCM reflash and ECM tune path to get better gas mileage and also some extra torque - I was planning to do some trailer runs this summer, but then the whole world went down under

 

[MMMZON]

Not sure whether it will work, but here is a good attempt at sharing the video from today: 20200429_094831_clipped_ready.mp4

The most visible issue is when shifting from 3 to 4. Rpms drop to certain level, stay there for under a second, and then drop further down.

 

[MMMZON]

There is no hard shifts, surging or slipping . At least I do not feel them.

I do not change position of the foot and the second portion of the video (after a stop) was done on a flat straight line, with a good surface (no bumps) so foot position should be even (the foot is on the pedal at the same angle).

 

[MMMZON]

My TCM is back at stock, i.e., to the pre-emissions state. It was reflashed by @yktreg so I assume it should not have the emissions "fix" issue in it, right?

As far as the transmission reset is concerned:

• power on, engine off
• pedal to the metal for 30 seconds
• power off

That is pretty much what instructions read as far as I could tell. Am I missing anything?

 

[MMMZON]

gonna take 1-2 weeks depending on how much you drive.

this part is certainly new so I guess now I just need to drive around to see whether the thing settles down over time. It is strange, since it has been 4+ weeks since I did tune and TCM reflash, and did 1.5k miles with no issues.

 

[MMMZON]

I believe his statement was that TCM fix removes 80% of the diesel "fix" applied by VW. I had the 3rd gear hang on TCM with official VW fix, but not even once since I replaced it with the one fixed by Yrktreg. I am with @chewblekka on this one. Whatever I am observing might be just me not pushing the engine hard enough (that would too odd,l given the torque it has) or there is something else going on. Given that the original (stock) ECM tune does not have the same issue, it is clearly (in my mind) associated with Malone tune.

I will drive the car for a few days and see whether the issue goes away. Not going to do any more resets since it does not seem to do anything outside of the first drive.

 

[MMMZON]

a ton of miles every week

Does anybody have any clue what the volume / drive time is needed to complete the transmission re-training?