I've had the ILX for a little bit over a month now and haven't experienced anything until now. To Other ILX drivers out there, is the tachometer supposed to jump when going downhill with the brakes? Today in San Francisco(the city of hills...) I was going down a hill and the engine made a bunch of noise with the tachometer jumping up. Please advise? Dealer or normal? Thanks!

 

I don't drive an ILX, so I don't know in your specific case, but are you aware of something called "engine braking"? Some cars do this going down hill automatically, I don't know if the ILX is one of them. The point is that the wheels will basically drive the engine, creating a lot of drag, and slowing the car down. The tachometer would jump up during engine braking because the car would drop a gear or two, which also explains the noise. It's probably normal.

 

Yeah man, to me it sounds normal.

 

It's normal. Mine does it as well. You can definitely feel the gear shift.

 

Honda has had "Grade Logic" transmission for years. It would make sense it is in the ILX, but not positive as I don't have one.

 

Thanks a lot! It's just I never felt/heard it in the RDX or any other cars I previously had.

 

Yeah, I'm assuming you're coming from an RDX Turbo, but ours never automatically engine brakes.

 

Grade Logic has been around for years, since the '94 Integra days (at least). It's a simple program that watches vehicle speed and throttle position. If the speed goes up but the throttle is closed, it shifts to a lower gear. These days its probably a lot more sophisticated but the basic functionality is still there.

 

That's really interesting, never experienced that. On a particular hill, the Panamera will jump to about 3000 rpm going down at approx. 30 mph, and the RDX stays in a higher gear. Maybe it just doesn't downshift as much as some other cars, I'm not sure.