We have just acquired another 2000 Audi A6 project car, with the 4.2 V8 engine and the ZF 5HP-24A transmission.

As told to me, the story is: The previous owner was driving the car to work one day, and noticed no symptoms of abnormal behavior until he stopped at an intersection. As he tried to accelerate away, the transmission slipped and then the car went into limp-home mode.  It has been misbehaving ever since.

I found it interesting that there was no warning. If the failure was due to clutch slippage then normally I’d expect that to be a very gradual and very noticeable thing that gradually gets worse and worse.