Dear all,
Just join the forum and hope to tap into the community knowledge base in order to shed some light on a baffling issue with my 2012 Yeti (registered and driven in Austria).
I'm a second owner of the Yeti since 2018 and have had 60k trouble-free KM with it so far (the car is currently at 90k KM). Starting about 2 months ago I started to notice a very subtle change in how the car behave at highway speeds (the majority of my driving is in the city under 50km/h when the car is behaving completely normal). When I accelerate in high gears (D6 or D7), for example trying to merge into highway traffics from an on-ramp, I would feel a subtle vibration through the gas padle and steering wheel. The vibration feels almost like there are pebbles stuck in the tyres ("stumps" or clicking at regular intervals depending on the speed the car is travelling in). It most often occur, probably more linked to my driving style than anything else, at around 2-2.5k RPM.
This has happened when I still have the summer wheels/tyres on and right before the mandatory switch to winter wheels/tyres on the 1st of November. My first thought was that the summer wheels may have been unbalanced so I will reserve judgement until I made the swap. Last weekend was the first time I took a long, highway drive since the wheel swap and the symptoms are still there, if not worse. In fact, I've experience 3 occasions in which the DSG actually briefly sliped out of gear (from D7 to D on the Maxidot display) during the trip on the highway. However, these occasions does not always happen when I was accelerating so may not have been linked.
The car has been served regularly by myself with annual oil change or every 10-11k KM. I have also just changed the plugs, wires and ignition coil this summer as the 1.2 TSI seems to wear them down every 30-40k KM (typical symptom which triggered the last replacement was hesitation when accelerate at high gear, which felt very much like clutch slipping; however, that was completely different to the current symptom/issue).
I am not sure what I should do next. The latest symptom, i.e., slipping out of gear, seems to point the issue to the DSG, but I cannot rule out that there are other engine control issues which could have triggered the weird DSG behavior. The rational next step is to send the car to the local Skoda dealer to diagnose, but I fear that I may not be able to replicate the problem with them (I've scanned the car using OBD 11 and there was no fault stored). The skiing season is coming and I'd hate to have my family stuck on the mountain road when the DSG (or something else) gives up...
Many thanks in advance for any advice/help!
Kai