Scirocco Central

So, having driven manual cars mostly, DSG is a totally new experience for me. Only had the car 3 days, less than 200 miles.

I'd seen around that the gearbox adapts to your driving style - that sounded like a bit of horseshit rumour to me, so in true internet echo-chamber fashion, I went looking for something to support my prejudice haha.

I came across this post on VWVortex, which was interesting reading. Have applied some of it already on the way to work, and in the extraordinarily small sample size, it seemed to hold - that is, when using the manual sequential paddles, I pressed the accelerator before downshift, to make the mechatronics brain think that I wanted to downshift and thus queue the correct gear. It seemed to go well.

Any other tips for driving with DSG? Do you disagree with the post?

Takes a bit of getting used to; I had a manual 1.8T Golf before hand and it was a good few weeks before I appreciated the 'manual' side of things of the DSG. The technology is fairly intelligent and does adapt to your driving style.

Best discovery; launch control XD Turn the TCU off and put the DSG into Sport or Manual. Then put your foot on the brake, rev up to 3K+ with the accelerator (it's wierd to do this but practice makes perfect) and release the brake.

And hold on for dear life.

Enjoy!

No it doesnt adapt to your style, just on how deep you press in the gas pedal and in what amount of time.
But some remappers can change the dsg map, shifttime, shiftpoints, max torque, maximum/minimum rpm.

I'm pretty sure that it doesn't adapt. It adapts to itself for wear, but essentially as that post on vortex suggests, it will do things based on its inputs. Adaption implies them putting a memory chip in there and additional code to deal with it. Strikes me as a needless expense: Occam's Razor.

Anyway, I've been trying to use a few of the tips he suggested - notably stamp on the throttle before changing down. It works like a fucking dream.

I don't think it learns driving style, but I swear my car drives differently after the husband has had a go. For this reason I don't let him drive it anymore haha

DSG does adapt to driving style over time. It's most obvious straight after all the adaptions have been reset back to default after a DSG service

Just what grasscutter says it adapts to the wear of the clutchplates what will change the hydraulic pressure at certain positions of the clutches and gears. In the end the wear is caused by your driving style Don't do to many launch controls hehe.

Realistically, I don't think VW would spend the money on the electronics (and more importantly the code, as such adaption is very complicated) to allow the DSG to adapt to your driving style. Simply doesn't make any financial sense or benefit. It only will adapt to itself, for example, for wear, which does have a reason. I reckon any adaption is done in the meatbag behind the wheel

I don't *know* this of course, only using a general experience of programming which I imagine to be correct.

Anyway... any other driving tips?

It does adapt to your throttle input in D/S mode....and it's this adaption that causes problems for some people as if you switch driving styles it can become unpredictable.

If you drive calmly, with gradual pedal response the box overtime will become a bit slow to respond - it will slip the clutch more for a smoother take off and smoother gear transitions.
If you drive hard, it will start to bang the clutch in for faster launches and gear changes.

The problem is if you suddenly go from driving calmly for a while to hard the box will feel sluggish.
The opposite happens if you been driving hard for a while - the day after a hard session you may be in traffic and the box will be jerky and lerchy with hard clutch engagements.
It can take some time for it to settle back down in these circumstances.

There are levels in between driving calmly and hard - which is why if you're the sort of person who changes driving styles, you can find the box is hard to predict sometimes and doesn't respond the way you expect.

I wouldn`t try the launch control too much. It was said in the earlier models it made the DSG fail. Vw would plug in their gadgets and see what you did and would not cover the cost.

Ok, so after a few months... I love the DSG in the R. Heaps better than I thought it would be, and when I get back in my old Golf R32 (for sale btw ) having to use a gear lever seems archaic. Haha, not really, but you get the idea.

I'm so totally sold on just sitting there pressing the go pedal (use paddles occasionally but it's a faff when coming to a stop having to drop 5 gears, although the car does do it itself). Sport mode is pretty good, use it quite regularly when I want to make progress.