1st gear on the move in DSG

[mobile S4]

Coming from a manual car, I would never downshift into first while moving, but wonder if this carries over to DSG.

Accidentally shifted into first last night (in manual mode - car shifted down to 2nd and I downshifted again oops) - not going to fast ~ 5mph. Got a nice growl from the engine and the acceleration was pretty damn good, but very jerky and hard to do smoothly.

Does anyone shift into first while on the move - when do you do it (situations and speeds)? Just worried about damaging transmission.

Something to perfect or something to avoid all-together?

[weirded]

I shift down to first regularly when stopping at a light. Don't see why first gear should be any different from other gears in the DSG.

[s4ibis]

I downshift to first while coming to a stop. Car is always jerky on the 2-1 shift.

[forza1976]

if the computer lets you based upon the RPM/speed/etc. it's not a big deal. That growl was probably the rev-match ;)

[dparm]

Downshifting to 1st is always a bit jerky. I try to avoid it. When coming to a stop I just get down to 2nd and then let the car go to 1st once it has come to a stop.

[Jones2012s4]

If your downshifting to 1st manually best way is to not have your foot on the gas pedal(no pedal modulation)and blip the paddle, smoothest way to do it. Still can be a bit rough but by far the smoothest.

Mmmm smooooth.

[IceAero]

[This might be horribly irrelevant as my S4 is 6MT]

After 6 years with the DSG on my GTI, I learned to pretty much avoid downshifting into first gear with the DSG. I only say this because the transmission, even in sport mode, did not preselect 1st gear until you were going fairly slow. With any throttle application in 2nd, the transmission was getting ready for 3rd. If you were at 1k rpm and floored it, I still felt it pause to shift into 1st if you told it to. I never liked this feeling. I don't know what the preselection profile is like on this version, but I imagine it also rarely preselects first.

What I did do occasionally, was downshift 3-1 as I approached a stop, but it felt a little obnoxious. Though I usually did this if I was about to make a U-turn.

[MrFunk]

Syncromesh allows for smooth downshift into 1st in a manual car - I do it all the time doing rolling stops at stop signs. Older cars with crap syncromesh will have issues with that but any modern car should not.