[Alexander Morris]

I’ve been trying to sort out a gearbox service for my 2016 A4 and I keep running into the same problem, which is that I don’t know who to trust when it comes to the fluid itself. I’ve read enough threads on here by now to understand that using the wrong fluid can cause all sorts of problems down the line, and that some of the cheaper stuff people sell isn’t actually approved for these gearboxes even if the bottle says it is. My car has done about 95,000 kilometres and the shifts have become noticeably less smooth than they used to be, nothing catastrophic, just a bit of hesitation pulling away and the odd clunk when it shifts down. A mate told me it might just need fresh fluid, which sounds simple enough, but then I started reading about how specific these transmissions are and now I’m worried about letting just anyone touch it. What I’m trying to find is somewhere I can get genuine Audi transmission fluid in Abu Dhabi, either to buy myself or to have a workshop supply and fit, but I want to know it’s the real thing rather than a copy or an equivalent that isn’t actually approved. How do you even tell the difference, because the bottles all look similar to me and I wouldn’t know a fake from a genuine one if my life depended on it. Is it worth paying the premium for the official stuff, or are there decent alternatives that meet the same specification and work just as well? And does the type of gearbox change what fluid you need, because I’m still not entirely sure which one I’ve got and I don’t want to order the wrong thing. I’d also like to know roughly what a fluid change should cost including labour, because I’ve seen wildly different prices and I don’t know what’s reasonable. Any advice from people who’ve actually done this would be really helpful, because I’d rather get it right the first time than cut corners and regret it later.

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