I had an '06 TL loaner yesterday and noticed just how sluggish my '04 is during acceleration compared to it. In the '06, if you push down the pedal even a little bit, the car moves out quickly and smoothly. On mine, the RPMs increase a few thousand but the car just slowly accelerates. You really need to punch it to get moving. Before I go back to the dealer and complain about a possible torque converter issue, I thought I'd try resetting the ECU to see if that helps. But I don't want to have to reset everything. Is it possible to reset the ECU by simply pulling a fuse?

Also, if I do pull the battery cable, will I loose all of my NAVI settings (previous destinations, stored entries) and the HFL setup (connection setup, address book)?

 

how are you going to reset/reprogram the ecu yourself? I'm not sure if it's worth the price you may have to pay if something goes wrong.

 

Reset, not reprogram. Since the ECU 'learns' the way you drive and makes adjustments accordingly, removing power is a way to, in effect, reboot it and start with a clean slate. You remove power for a while and then let it run untouched for 10 minutes (idle learn procedure). I'd just prefer not to have to deal with resetting everything else in the car in addition to the ECU.

 

that's not proven. however, remove both ECU fuses would do it. just flip over the fuse box cover it will tell you.

 

Dan - first off, I agree with your assessment...I had an 06 loaner a few weeks ago that seemed to glide compared to my 04. But with regards to the ECU learning your driving style, I thought it was continuous, so if you drive differently now than you did 6 months ago, it will account for that. thought I read that here somewhere...oh yeah, don't know about the NAVI, but your radio presets, seats, etc. are held in memory if the battery is disconnected (I had mine disconnected for 7 hours and everything came back).

 

I've driven it pretty hard this week and can't tell any difference in the way it shifts so this weekend I'll probably pull the two fuses that ttliang mentioned and see if it makes any difference. Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

 

pull out the fuses and let them stay out for 10-15 minutes, then start the car and put no load on the engine, turn everything you can turn off off like the audio and what not, let the engine warm up till the fan goes off, you can hold the rpms up if you want to make it warm up faster, as long as your not putting any load on the engine, it should relearn idle and if its nice and cold out it will re learn it and you will feel a proformance differance, but slightly

 

Here is something to try, it worked on the Passat, it reset the transmission
settings.
Turn key on but do not start the engine. Hold the gas pedal to the floor for a few seconds, let it up, then start the engine.

On the Passat, that invoked a sport mode, or reset the trans settings, not sure
which. It may or may not work on the TL but its worth a shot.

The Passat shared a lot of parts with the audi cars, and they had a sport mode button, and in the passat, the ecu could be programmed to stay in the sport mode using a vag-com scan tool.

Maybe this explains why there seemed to be such a difference between the manual and auto trans TL's we test drove. The auto was brand new, still had the
plastic all over everything, and the shift points were very aggressive, which made the auto cars seem much louder, less smooth, and had the rev's much higher during normal driving....

Brett