Yes, a tiptronic.
In order to handle the upgrade in horsepower, I needed to upgrade the torque converter and the valve body. There are lots of horror stories about vendors not doing this correctly, and many are associated with
Levelten, however, I'm glad to report (knock on wood) that I have had zero issues with it, and it's been almost 50,000 miles.
L10 Torque Converter
L10 Valve Body
The torque converter handles the extra power, and the valve body makes for crisper and faster shifts which attempt to reduce the wear and tear on the gears. Levelten is infamous for:
- Very noticable 'clunk' when putting the car into gear
- Hard 5-4 and 2-1 downshifts
- Hard downshifts when flooring the gas pedal
My car exhibits all of these. It annoys the hell out of my sometimes, but most of the time I'm fine with it. To avoid the hard downshifts (really most notable from 2-1) I'll put the transmission into drive before coming to a stop; once stopped, I'll put it into Tip mode again. Also, during spirited driving, I'm generally in Tip mode, so the heavy clunk when flooring it doesn't happen.
Probably contributing to the clunks, is the fact that still have a GIAC Tip Chip installed. This is an electronic module that gest soldered onto the TCU (transmission control unit) that also forces crisper / faster shifts. It would take having an extra TCU around to test differences without the Tip Chip, something that I don't have.
