[pdqford]

I was wondering if any one has noticed:


It seems to me that while operating in cruise control and a downgrade causes the vehicle speed to increase, at some point the transmission automatically starts to downshift to hold the vehicle back. Seems to only happen if you are completely off the throttle.


With the cruise set at 55 mph on a familiar secondary road, I came to a long down grade that eventually turns into a 45 mph zone and then becomes fairly steep as the speed limit drops to 35 mph entering a small town.


As I approach the 45 mph zone I begin clicking the cruise set (-) button to walk the cruise setting slowly down to 35 mph. Don't want to annoy the local fuzz. But wait! What is all this buzzing noise? Oh look, the tach is up over 4000 rpm. What the?????? So I tap the left paddle shifter. Now the RPMs jump to over 5000 rpm and the display indicates 3rd gear!


Now I see. It automatically down shifted from 6th to 5th, and it was still going too fast for the cruise setting so it dropped down to 4th gear. Then I hit the paddle shifter so it responded with 3rd gear.


Any one else notice this?

 

[goepfrich]

Yep, all the time when I'm coming back down from Flagstaff, a 3,500 ft drop in elevation. The cruse will keep me at 80 w/o braking.

 

[MKCFAN]

Yes, ours does this and it helps avoid exceeding the speed limit going down hill but we've never had the engine RPM's get out of hand.

 

[DoJo]

I noticed this also just recently. I hardly ever drive 55 on cruise. Most of the time it is set at 60 when I am on this particular highway which has a very long downgrade. The down shift at 60 is only slightly noticeable. One day I was just enjoying the day and had it set at 55. The downshift was very hard, in fact my head and upper body actually lurched forward in the process and the tach jumped to 3500. The shift is really quite different between 55 and 60 on cruise.

 

[DeMarco]

That's weird.

something they should look into addressing in the future, it's not how a transmission should shift.