That was the fucking problem this entire time. Excuse the language, but it's warranted. I knew it had to be comm problem, but GWS never even crossed my mind until you said it straight out
@amg6975. I appreciate everyone that has offered help and ideas through me being an idiot though lol
M3 0x399 on CAN works like a champ with comms passing GWS again. I need to fix up the sketch to keep it on to take drive and see if anything feels different in the shifts, but it does set to M DL5 and enable RNG_L/M drive or maybe MDM DSC (steering lock light on dash). I'll need to set to turn DSC completely off, to verify, but I'm almost expecting it not to work on 1M DSC flash. Right now, once it falls off, it will not make the settings function again until CAN goes to sleep and restart, so there's some work to be done to make on/off and apply settings without that.
This does bode well for altering the MSD81 0x399 to add the bits to apply DME settings to DCT, but still not sure if a sport/sport+ command will go to it without CAN yet. What I'll try next is IKM0S + SZL on (it was off for this test) and no manual CAN to see if anything at all will possibly go without the low bits.
It's absolutely pouring and you can hear it in the vid, so I don't think there will be any test drives to confirm today, but I think we cracked this in the last week or 2 and only finally realized it today.
Behold lol