[GP86]

I have been experiencing similar problems as you've described. I had my A8 transmission shutter fluid flush done about 15,000 miles ago. I now have 40K miles. I've had jerky, stalling, and generally rage inducing transmission behavior for the last 10K miles. I am wondering if the ticking noise might be a fuel vapor purge valve. I know these are duty cycle solenoids and they are well known to be noisy, but I've not heard them be this noisy before. At any rate, it seems to be the same frequency as most purge valves I've heard, but much louder.

For the transmission issue, it seems to happen to me when the trans fluid is cold and the vehicle has just been started. If I am pulling out of a parking lot I hit the gas and the car seems to lunge forward, then immediately stall its forward motion. This forces my body to lunge forward independently of the car in a weird way. It's like the car threw me forward and then stopped.

After this happens, I get a similar feeling when the car is downshifting and I am slowing down. It's very bad in stop-and-go traffic. I feel a lot of jerkiness as the car is downshifting. It will downshift, jerk, stop abruptly, then jerk again. It's something I have just been living with because the last time I had it in for this issue the techs said they could not duplicate it.

A bit different from you, though, I have been recently using the paddles to shift my own gears and I find I do it much more smoothly than the automatic programming does. I have only tried it twice, but I don't experience the jerkiness or stalling phenomena when I am changing the gears myself.