Tranny shifting rough after washing engine

Hi all, I've got the 09a tiptronic and just degreased and rinsed my engine concentrating around the tandem pump area as I am currently investigating leaks in that area. After I was done it was running at a higher idle so I took it for a test drive. At first the tranny slipped a bit when shifting but after it got warm it started shifting really hard especially from 2nd to 3rd. Drops into gear. No problems before this. Thinking water got in a breather somewhere?

Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk

That would be my first guess.
Did you scan for codes?

Speersy49 said:

Hi all, I've got the 09a tiptronic and just degreased and rinsed my engine concentrating around the tandem pump area as I am currently investigating leaks in that area. After I was done it was running at a higher idle so I took it for a test drive. At first the tranny slipped a bit when shifting but after it got warm it started shifting really hard especially from 2nd to 3rd. Drops into gear. No problems before this. Thinking water got in a breather somewhere?

Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

I had a similar thing happen at a DIY car wash with a couple of BEWs...always 09A automatic car. The difference was that it would not rev over idle and I had to drive it for 8 miles back that way. After it had a chance to dry up it was fine. I suspect it being an electrical problem rather than water entering the case vent. I'm not sure that it left any codes oddly enough.


The high idle may mean that you have a fault code lurking in the engine or trans controller. Do a full scan of the car's controllers.

Thanks, missed this reply. Everything was fine after it sat overnight. Haven't had a problem since.

Sent from my LM-G710 using Tapatalk