Questions from a new Owner

[SMB]

So I'm now 4 months into ownership, of a Scirocco R DSG. Taking a while to get used to DSG but can see both positives and negatives and why some people love it. I have noticed a couple of items that I thought I'd ask for clarity on, mainly not R specific so have decided to post here for your thoughts and comments .

1. In D, going downhill, despite maintaining a fixed speed on the brakes, the car keeps changing down to increase engine braking, normal?
I can over come by moving to manual mode, but was a suprise first time, and it wasn't in cruise.
2 . IN manual mode, idle speed is a little higher than in D, around 1100 rpm?
3. The car has done about 5k miles now, so down changes when on the brakes can feel slightly sharp from 4th down, feels like fairly strong engine braking kicking in, normal or something which improves as car loosens up?
4. can you teach the car to not change up to 5th and 6th quite so early, in the R it drops off boost if you aren't watching carefully, so I often use manual override for this.
5. on upchanges you get a little jerk if keeping your foot down, these go if you lift off slighty as you would in a manual

Overall though the car is a different animal to my mk5 GTI, more a race horse than a general purpose horse if you like, and a day of driving mixing D and manual mode does make you realise why twin clutches are becoming so popular.

[Kev]

1. In D, going downhill, despite maintaining a fixed speed on the brakes, the car keeps changing down to increase engine braking, normal?

Yep.
You're probably just dropping the revs below about 1200 which is enough for it to downshift.
Very useful in the snow cos it controls descent very well imo.

2 . IN manual mode, idle speed is a little higher than in D, around 1100 rpm?

Can't say I've noticed.

3. The car has done about 5k miles now, so down changes when on the brakes can feel slightly sharp from 4th down, feels like fairly strong engine braking kicking in, normal or something which improves as car loosens up?

In D I find the downchanges are fine except the one to 1st when you're rolling up to traffic lights. That can be a little sharp sometimes. In other gears I don't really notice it. The other time it's a little lumpy is if you catch it out when it's about to change down and you accelerate. eg if you're rolling up to a roundabout or junction and you can see it's clear and decide to carry on. It can sort of stutter while it does the downchange it was planning to do before it was rudely interrupted!

4. can you teach the car to not change up to 5th and 6th quite so early, in the R it drops off boost if you aren't watching carefully, so I often use manual override for this.

Don't think so. In D it's designed to be as efficient as possible so it up changes at the first opportunity.

5. on upchanges you get a little jerk if keeping your foot down, these go if you lift off slighty as you would in a manual

Haven't noticed this on my TSI.

[SMB]

1. In D, going downhill, despite maintaining a fixed speed on the brakes, the car keeps changing down to increase engine braking, normal?

Yep.
You're probably just dropping the revs below about 1200 which is enough for it to downshift.
Very useful in the snow cos it controls descent very well imo.

Hi, thanks for this, no, it wasn't below 1200, at one stage it decided to drop to 3rd and the revs jumped to 3000 plus!

[skippy]

5. on upchanges you get a little jerk if keeping your foot down, these go if you lift off slighty as you would in a manual

This sounds similar to our Polo GTI DSG (7 speed), when keeping your foot down, the car 'lurches' slightly as it changes up which is not what I would expect. Before the warranty runs out I will ask the dealer to check out the clutches.

On lighter acceleration there is no 'lurching' in between gears.

[SMB]

I'm not sure lurching is the right word, there's no sudden lurch from standstill , in drive the changes are almost impeceptable upwards, in manual, the revs are typically higher at the change point,and when pressing on it's not a lurch more a hesitation, but more than you would expect . I may be being overly sensitive to itbut i can't remember now from the test drives i did.

I am puzzled by the idle revs being higher in manual mode though...