DSG gearbox problems in SEAT Ibiza Cupra

I bought a SEAT Ibiza Cupra 1.4TSI on finance in June 2013 for my wife. It has a seven-speed DSG automatic gearbox. Within a couple of weeks the car would jump out of gear when she was pulling away or driving along. For example it would be in D1 and then it would jolt and just say D. The only way to get the car to go back into gear was to turn it off and on again.

She took the car to the local SEAT dealer several times and each time they could not replicate the fault. Eventually on the fourth time of the car being towed to the garage they replicated the fault. They did a gearbox update and gave the car back to us. However a couple of weeks later the fault happened again and they replaced the ‘box in November 2013.

This seemed to fix things until February 2014 when another similar gearbox fault occurred. She had the car collected and taken to the dealership. They replicated the fault and at first thought it was an issue with the accelerator. Upon further testing they said it was a gearbox issue and gave it a software update. A further road test caused the fault to happen again.
They decided they needed to hook the fault reporting computer up to the car as when it was faulting it was not leaving an error code. However, since then they have not been able to replicate the fault again and SEAT tech have decided to replace the "gear selector", but cannot guarantee that this will fix it as it is a "stab in the dark".

I am at a real loss as to what to do here and was hoping that you might be able to help. Have you come across this issue before and if so what is the resolution?

Asked on 2 April 2014 by ajkeefe

Answered by Honest John
There has been a worldwide recall of 2.6 million 2012 and 2013 7-speed DSGs for this reason so yes, I am familiar with the problem. In hot countries crystallisation of the synthetic oil in the transmission knocks out the mechatronics. The recall, to replace the oil with mineral oil as used before 2012 has now spread to the UK and the SEAT dealer should know about this. Another reader with the same problem in a new Golf Mk VII was given a new replacement Golf Mk VII.
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