Santacruz

I have never been able to select manual with the gear stick. The Tiptronic buttons work okay. I also (sometimes) had to turn the car on and off a couple of times to release the key.
I then started to have random dropping into manual from drive while driving. I did not and I repeat I did not catch the steering wheel buttons. I had read about this and made a deliberate position on the steering wheel to make sure I didn't catch them.

I searched google, this forum, many other forums for answers.
The top ones were:-
The magnets under the gear shift circuit board may have come out.
Or the blind they run on may have broken.
The gear box cable probably needed adjustment.
There maybe trans fluid creeping up the wiring loom.
Do a Tiptronic reset and a throttle reset.

I stripped the interior down and followed and checked all the suggestions I could find. Everything was good. All my scan would show was 1045 Passive/sporadic selector lever switch.
So, I removed the selector lever assembly and the Tiptronic control unit.
I checked all the wires for connection and continuity. Everything was good.
Going through the wiring diagram I noticed that there was a 'always live' feed to pin 3 on the Tiptronic control and pin 2 on the selector lever circuit board plug.
On checking this, pin 2 on the selector lever plug was dead, But the Tiptronic was live. Both of these are fed from fuse 29 (10a).
So I had the passenger seat carpet up to try and trace where the joint was for these 2 feeds (and while I was at it, I did all the joints I could fined - I had in the past done the drivers side)
I could not find this joint, but did trace the Tiptronic wire so far up the loom, so I tapped into it with a new wire to go to the selector lever plug.

This is the stage of reassembly after repairing wire to selector lever plug.

Trying to trace the wire from the selector lever plug was almost impossible as it disappeared in a loom behind the audio head unit.
This did throw up a bonus. My Nav always showed me being in the middle of the Atlantic. When I removed the head unit, while trying to trace the gear wire, I found the Sat Nav plug laying on the carpet and not plugged in. So that got fitted when I put everything back together.

So, long story short, I now have a proper functioning gearbox. I can select drive or manual, it doesn't drop into manual when driving anymore, when I switch off, I can take the key out.
Having reset all the fault codes (due to causing many while ign on and half units unplugged) and reset the Tiptronic again, I can't say if the shifting is any different to before as I guess it has to learn my driving style again.
Rescan showed the Tiptronic as Pass.

hahnmgh63

Congratulations. A lot of work but at least it feels good when you accomplish what you set out to do, and the Nav was a bonus.