Questions and Answers

Audi Reverse Comes And Goes Q. Hi there, I don't know if you can help me but I thought I'd ask. My wife has a 1994 Audi Quattro 100 which has lost reverse gear in the last couple of months. It is an Automatic. The first time we had the transmission fluid and filter changed and that worked for about a month. Then it happened again the other day. It lasted 23 days and then without doing anything it came back again and is working fine again.

The local Audi dealer which is quite large has never heard of this symptom which I find very strange. There are only 128,000 km on the car and all she does is drive back forth to work. She took it to a mechanic the last time (a few days ago) but by the time she got there it was working fine. Try as they might the couldn't find a problem: either in driving or with on board computer.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated and I look forward to hearing from you at your leisure.

Thanks,
Henry

A. The only way I can think of for a transmission to do something like this is a bad or stuck valve in the valve body. If it were something broken inside the transmission, it would work today and not tomorrow.

If your dealer puts their transmission pressure tester they can easily confirm this. The dealer can also use their scan tool to diagnose it. But it has to be doing it for them to confirm anything. If they test it while it's working, all the readings will show as good.