I dumped my MK5 Jetta 6MT and bought a 2012 TDI DSG Golf.

Overall, it's nice in traffic, but holy crap does this trans suck at pretty much everything.  I've emailed a bunch of well known tuners and have received ambiguous/non-committal type responses, somewhat indicating to me that most of the DSG tunes out there only address the torque limiters, manual gear holding, and the addition of launch control.

I feel most of the issues are calibration related, but I can't help but wonder if there's a mechanical defect with my mechatronic or DMF that I need to get addressed under warranty before modifying the car.

The issues I've noticed:

Low speed oscillations when the engine/trans are cold, resulting in a bucking and audible noises from the backlash in the geartrain.

Around 40-45mph there's an intermittent jump in RPM and interruption of power delivery while in maintenance throttle like it's momentarily declutching.  It's very nerve wracking for me for some reason.

In automatic mode the trans refuses to upshift normally from first to second when there's steering input (like making a left turn from a stop light), and instead it upshifts at the limiter or unless manually commanded.

In manual mode it won't hold second gear while rolling through a right turn on red (legal here) and instead downshifts to first and then immediately upshifts.

At certain speeds when you hit the kickdown, the trans downshifts too far and then immediately upshifts.

The most concerning part is that under spirited driving (on a track for example), in manual mode, braking hard near the lockup threshold and commanding downshifts results in the trans going to neutral, the revs dropping to just above idle, and when you transition to throttle for corner exit it spends time hunting for a gear, meanwhile you've scrubbed a significant amount of speed.  It's like there's a panic stop mode where it commands neutral?

Last, a command to downshift to first when rolling to a stop results in a very poor match rev downshift, clunks, and overall jerkiness.  There's no reason it should do that.

It seems to me that 90% of these issues are calibration related, and 90% of the driving population wouldn't even notice them.

I'd like to do a DPF delete, stage 2 tune, and DSG flash, but I also don't want to do this on a gearbox with issues.  My sister has an identical car and some of the issues aren't present in her car, like the low speed oscillation for example.

No DTC's are stored, and the car has 8500 miles on it now.  Thoughts?  Suggestions?  Any tuners out there who want to take my money to fix it???

Jason,

I own a DSG car and tune many.  DSG on your car sounds like it has problems.  They are in an incredible gearbox.  I'm in the UK so can't help with tuning it unless you have a way of reading and writing the box. But, you shouldn't need to tune anything unless you want to mess with the shift points - i'd get it looked at.

Rick

Dealer says everything I complained about is "normal" and that I should "see how bad it is on the Tiguan".

Uh. Wat?

sounds to me like they don't want to warranty it out because it is still "functioning"...take it to another dealer/s for second and 3rd opinions and don't tell them you went to your home dealer first if you can help it.