Is it me or does the transmisson seem to get up to 5th gear too quickly? It seems like you barely get to 30mph and the car is already in 5th, almost lugging the engine. then if you need any sort of acceleration or you hit even a slight hill, the tranny is hunting around for a lower gear. Is this a malfuncton or just an annoyance that bothers me more coming directly from a 6mt? I understand fuel milage concernes but it just seems that the car will cruise in 5th at a speed that is too slow to be in the power curve of the engine. Anyone else?

 

The car is tuned to get the best mileage possible, and that means the lowest RPMs tolerable. This is indeed a feature of the tranny. With my RL, though, I was usually in 4th at 30 mph.

 

06TL929: The transmission control module is adaptive to the way you drive - how the tranny shifts depends on how agressively or passively you step on the gas. My driving habits cause mine to shift to 5th gear at approx 44-45 mph, accellerating at a not too aggressive rate. More aggressive accelleration causes the 4-5 shift to take place at 55-60 mph.

You are correct about about almost lugging the engine -- mine, even with the 45mph shift point really loads the engine once in 5th gear -- RPMs drop to barely over 1400 at 45mph. My engine does not really come alive in 5th until revs get up to 1900 to 2000 RPMS. One other difference, mine never has any tendency to hunt - merely drops down one gear if more power is needed.

If you can't achieve a higher shift point by harder acceleration then perhaps you have a problem with the transmission control module. The RL is geared to 35mph per 1000RPM in 5th gear. If yours is shifting into 5th at 30 mph that would indicate "less" than 1000RPMs on the tachometer -- way too low and definately what I would consider "lugging". If pushing your accelleration harder does not raise the shift point your transmission control module may have a problem or may need to have its firmware updated.

Coincidentally, all the shift points will move higher the harder you accellerate -- wide open throttle from a standstill should result in a 1-2 shift at about 30 mph, with each higher gear at an accordingly higher shift speed. Check it out.

 

^^thanks Jackzilla. You just gave me the green light to go out and have some fun! Hopefully it works..

 

I haven't been able to go 5th unless I'm going over 40.

My car is slow to upshift, and slow to downshift.

The only way to get a double shift down is to floor it "unexpectedly", if you do it any slower and all you get is a 1 down, very lazy. I find my self flipping the left paddle to get any sort of real kick out of it.

On the other hand, if switched to S mode the stupid thing refuses to downshift even when cruising.

 

I have no problems with acceleration when using the paddle shifters. Just hate using it when I have the instant fuel mileage display on wating it drop to zero!

 

With hard acceleration, you can get the RL to stay in 2nd gear until about 65 mph without redlining. Although in manual mode I've red lined it a couple times to have the limiter kick in and the car to suddenly lose power. ..my bad.

A nice manuever for passing on the highway when in auto, is to just drop the gear shift down to the 3rd gear setting... give you nice passing power, then you just pop in back up into auto.

Also, the RL can accelerate to 65 mph in 2nd gear, but in manual mode, you can't switch down to 2nd gear until the car is right at about 54 mph, then you can ride it up to 65 and pop it into 3rd... feels great.. 2nd has so much more of a nice punch then 3rd, especially with the VTEC working in the high revs...