Occasionally I have to travel on his highway that runs through a hill with a decent incline. I have been told to downshift whenever i'm climbing so i won't mess up my transmission. However, my bf said that I dont need to downshift because I have an automatic and i'm going against the car's natural response and end up messing my transmission. Whats a good way to tell when i need to downshift and when i dont? also, i noticed that sometimes when i drop a gear and then bring it back to the fourth gear again the car gets "stuck" on the lower gear for a few seconds, is there something wrong? I have an 01 automatica honda accord 4 cyclinder. please help!

 

umm...i personally wouldnt touch it. my friend does it all the time but it is just unnessecary wear and shit. hahahaha, my friend had a rental because his car was in the body shop and he went down the same hill trying to downshift it into 2nd...he accidently puts it into Reverse and it shuts off the truck's engine and he has to force the brake to the floor since there wasnt any power assitance...

it is normal for it to stick for a couple seconds but what is hella cool about this mod you can do to camry v6's is change a cable that controls the tranny shifting and it will shift way harder which actually saves the transmission because the clutch packs wont have to "engage" it as long.
too bad they dont have it for accords.

just use up your brakes...they are much cheaper.
btw? how many miles on accord?

 

Leave it in D4 for the climb. The tranny computer will shift down whenever it wants to. It doesn't need your permission.

If you happen to be at some unhappy combination of speed & slope, it might shift back & forth constantly, which is annoying. THEN you can shift to D3 to make it stop. But most likely you'll never have to do that.

OTOH, you can use D3 when you're going DOWN hill, for some engine braking. That can prevent your brakes from overheating if you're in the mountains.

 

just leave it alone

the tranny will downshift itself when needed

 

Your boyfriend is right Let the tranny do its thing. It is equipped with a system called 'grade logic control' that uses a series of algorithms and sensors to determine what gear the vehicle needs to be in. That's why if you're braking hard for a corner, the tranny will downshift as you enter it so you have power to cut through the apex. If you're going down a very very steep hill the tranny will downshift into 3rd by itself.

Jim: The 6th gen autos do not 'gear hunt' whatsoever, and IMO hold lower gears annoyingly long when an upshift could be done.

 

Yeah, I've seen that in the Helm book, but never knew how well it works. There's no real mountains here in Ohio...

 

I remember when i was in Dominican Republic i was driving n this longggg down hill and i had to down shift because they brakes might fail or overheat or anything bad could happen because the road was so long. auto or manual everyone in that highway knows to go down slow, so many ppl have die there that they have the virgin mary statue on a curve. is a mountain but the road is straigh down for miles and at the end is nothing but curve really bad. but like everyone said "Leave it in D4 for the climb"

 

:lmao: you're telling me, I'll be there tomorrow before I go back to college in Michigan. Glad to see you're an avid Helms reader like me :thumbup: GLC has never gear hunted on me once, it's pretty impressive.