hey guys .

when i had my tl about 3 weeks ago i used to floor it around for fun and you wuld feel the pull then it wuld down shift agian and VROOOM PULLL .. it wuld be liek the first downshift was sissy then the second was about right in the 2nd gears vtec and MAN..

well i went to the track yesterday and it wasnt doing it ???
even when i was drivin home i floor it and it wuld only downshift into 3rd???? not second
any ideas why ?? and its not that im goin too fast for the downshift .becasue i can ss my way to it ? but it still does it everyoncew in a while? has anyone else encountered this?

 

The 5AT won't downshift into 2nd gear over 4,000rpm, either flooring it or with SS. Just won't go there, no matter what you do, but I think L will do it. When you shift to L, it will go to 3d gear first, and then I think it will go to 2nd, but I haven't tested it for a while. Next time I go out, I will check it and let you know, unless someone else tells us first.

 

thanks man

 

I haven't worked out the speeds yet, but my 5AT definitely downshifts to 2nd in the mid-4000's.

I think there's a point, somewhere between 55-60mph, above which the car won't downshift lower than 3rd. I agree this is an RPM where 2nd would be better, though it would only take a couple of seconds to get to redline from there.

 

I played with L (Low) yesterday. Didn't get to do everything, but I found out some stuff.
1. If you shift to L at 55 or higher, it will only go to 3d gear
2. The manual, which supports my findings. says it will go into 2nd gear about 53, and 1st gear about 28. When I shifted into L about 55, it went to 3d and then quickly into 2nd, and then as I slowed more it went into 1st.

With SS, I have never been able to get into 2nd above 4000 rpm. If you try to downshift from 3d to 2nd, the 2 on the display will blink a couple of times and go back to 3, but the car never downshifts. Check your tach closely for this. I am not saying you are wrong, but if you are right then we need to find out why one car will shift differently from another. It could have something to do with the ECU adapting to individual driving habits, or it could be something else.

I know there is a slight difference in shifting with SS and L, and we figured it out a long time ago, but now I can't remember what it was.

 

i can get to 2nd when going a bite higher then 60mph. i try a few times in ss and after 2-3 tryis it goes.

 

These are my observations from the ride in to work this morning --

2nd is available via kickdown or SS up to 57mph. You can't get to 2nd gear if you're going 57.5.

If you step on it from cruise at 57mph, the car will select 3rd for about 1 second before dropping into 2nd. At higher speeds it just goes to 3rd and stays there.

Using 42mph @ 4000rpm as a baseline, this makes 2nd gear available at 5428rpm or below.

Using a redline of 6800 rpm, that means 2nd would be available in L or SS up to 71.4mph.

I'm not sure where the full-throttle shift point is; on many cars this is below redline. That would determine how fast the car will hold 2nd gear in auto mode.

 

Okay, I found some far more interesting things on my way home.

First, SS *will* allow you to select 2nd gear well over 60mph *if* you're off the throttle. Even though L-mode will not take 2nd till 53mph, you can select it manually at much higher speeds if you're coasting.

Cruise at 60+, put the car in 3rd, and then start shifting for 2nd. Car will refuse -- until you let up on the gas a bit. Then it will go right into 2nd, and stay there as if you'd been accelerating all along. And of course, at that speed the motor's really winding out in 2nd.

The next thing I discovered is that the 2nd gear shift point, in D, is about 6400rpm. That means 2nd gear's only good till about 67mph -- and suddenly a kickdown limit of 57mph is making sense. Basically, if you haven't got 10mph to gain in 2nd it won't shift lower than 3rd.

And this is not entirely without merit -- by the time you've downshifted and spent a second accelerating in 3rd gear, then downshifted again to 2nd, picked up 5mph and shifted back up to 3rd, it's hard to say with certainty you'd be ahead over just staying in 3rd the whole time.

The only thing that gets me is the 6400rpm shift point in D. This suggests that you really can get better performance in SS.

The only question this leaves is what the shift point is in L. If it shifts at redline, then L's your best racing gear -- higher shiftpoints than D, 1st gear all the way to the top, and it won't hit the rev limiter. But if it shifts around 6400, like D, then SS is the way to go -- and the better you get at approaching the rev limiter without hitting it, then the faster you'll be.

With this sort of hp, there's no reason for the 5AT to lose more than a couple of tenths to the 6MT in the 0-60 sprint.