blast461

Amen bro.

I had an Auto on my 78 Z-28, and I used a B&M Slap shifter. That was the sweetest setup. Once you get to know your car, you can really push her, and manually shifting your auto is about the best way to take advantage of it.

96vert

Interesting - I may give this a shot. It is a pain to wait and have it downshift (especially from a roll)... I also think I'll be getting the extended warranty hehe...

Jim

I shift it like I would a manual, looking at tach and a feel for the motor. As far as my experience shows me the shift are VERY quick after I move the lever.

It will stay in the gear I have selected until I shift up and it really bangs into next gear, when in auto shift in the "D" position the shifts have a bit of delay. That may because the system learns your driving habits for auto shifting. Most of the time I have wife and 2 kids in the back so I drive like a granny. But when it just me and the pony I bang the lever and the results are great. Like sixtysix said though I would really like a better shifter, that would help me a lot.

Jim

SixtySix

I was cruising at about 30 behind the Civic, a hole opens up for him, he guns it, a hole opend up for me at the same time to the right. We've probably all been at that point of just literally chugging along at slow speed in an automatic and get on it.....and nothing happens, it doesn't downshift so you are now bogging your car. After chugging along at slow speeds in this car it will shift accordingly, by manually dropping a gear I'm removing all doubt I wanna go...NOW.

I also noticed something kinda cool. After chugging along I come to stop sign, do a full stop. no traffic around, I get on it in "D". The 1-2 shift loses 3,000 rpm between gears. I come to the next stop, I do it again, but this time I manually shift the 1-2 right at 6,000 and loose only a 1000 rpm.
One more stop, I do it yet again, but this time just in "D" again.

Guess what?! The second time in "D" it only lost a 1000 rpm. I thought that was kinda cool

acadian

Nice... kinda training the auto I guess. This is all very interesting though to me. As far as a slap-style shifter for the automatic, where can I get one? Anyone thinking of getting one?

SixtySix

I haven't found any.....yet. I'm actually wondering if the stock one could be modified so that the button would need to be depressed to up shift or downshift for each gear?

That would be good enough for me

nynvolt

A little bit unrelated but may have some value. When I was in high school and a bit more foolish, I was driving my moms '79 chevy malibu wagon. Thinking I would be saving gas, I shifted into "N" while cruising down hill on the highway. I'd pick up quite a bit of speed and could easily be doing 70+ coasting. When I started to slow down and go up hill again I'd shift it back into "D" and just continue on my way. Well I accidently hit "R" while doing 60+ MPH. I about messed myself but all that happened before I got it back into drive was the tires barked pretty loudly.

The engine blew before the trans ever went out, after about 9 more years of service from the car.

So manually shifting up should really not do much damage if any to your trans. Either that or chevy made one heck of a durable auto in 1979.

acadian

Nice story. And definitely related enough to post. If a '79 auto tranny out of a Chevy can survive that (and I have heard that shifting from drive to neautral a lot will hurt the tranny) then the '05 transmission should be just fine.

SixtySix

I've got a ton of those stories from the C4 auto on my 66'. I used to do some crazy stuff with that thing. Floated the valves and nearly blew the engine downshifting while racing a Z28 (I was doin about a hundred), he pulled over with me to see if it was toast. After letting it sit awhile it started right up.... phew!

He won

2005MustangGT

uhmm, b.s.

Quote:

Originally posted by incorrigible@March 15, 2005, 1:21 PM
Not advisable! Better to take that $2,000+ (the cost of replacing your torched tranny) and put it into performance parts. Compromising your transmission for a few tens of a second gain is not a good trade off IMHO!

Quoted post

uhmm, obviously has been advised by an instructor of a racing school

Quote:

Originally posted by incorrigible@March 15, 2005, 2:57 PM
" Ok Fella's, all those who say NOT to manually shift the auto. What real experience do have with this? I'm thinking NONE. "

Four Mustangs (2 of them AODE's), plus several other automatic equipt cars! Ya I have SOME experience!

B)


He can obviously go ahead and do it, I just gave my OPINION. I would hate to see Acadian, slowely or otherwise, reck his transmission for the sake of a few extra .10's.

I'm obviously no expert and never claimed to be.

Quoted post

won't break your transmission by manually shifting it
<!--QuoteBegin-slegos888@March 15, 2005, 5:06 PM
well since you dont believe me that you will fvck up your tranny ill just add one other thing here....regardless of whether or not you think you are manually shifting your auto or not, you dont manually shift it.....even if you try the transmission/computer still has control over when to shift the tranny!....lets say for intstance you put the car in "1"floor it till about 4-4500rpms then shift to "2" if you are at wot the tranny wont shift untill it hits the predetermined wot shift point and if you keep in in "1" to long you may blow the engine or actaully run slower due to over reving!...the computer is smarter and faster they you can ever hope to be...put it in "d" and put the pedal to the floor!!!!!!!!!!!1

Quoted post

[/quote]
alright, hate to beat a dead horse, but I will anyways.
by manually shifting an auto, you are building a higher "line pressure" which in turn makes the car shift harder/faster. If you start off in 1'st it will stay in 1'st until you bump the shifter up into 2'nd. The only thing that I would advise against is starting off w/ you gear selector in 2nd because it will cause the tranny to skip 1'st as if you are in a snowy/wet tractionless condition, but any other gear that you put the tran in, it will start off in first and shift as high as the gear that you have the selector in w/out damaging the transmission...If you think I'm full of it, go to a local drag strip and talk to the ones w/ automatic transmissions and ask, "how many transmissions have you broken from manually shifting?"...your answer will be 0. You won't blow up the motor either, unless you are a dumb ***, who has changed their rev limiter to 8,000 rpms, and likes the way the rev limiter sounds. I haven't steered you wrong yet acadian, you will get better performance by manually shifting your tranny...if you are shifting it at the correct shift points.
-as for older C4' and AOD's, you had to pull the shifter into L, and then when ready for it to shift, you had to quickly slam it up into 2nd and then pull it back into L, so that it would not jump into 3rd....if you didn't do this the trans would jump straight into third...I've driven just about any type of mustang "violently" from the 60's to 05's....never broken a tranny.
*****************
It is the people that are scared of breaking something by trying something new, that will never have a fast car, and therefore will never know the truth about what they talk about as being dangerous!!!!!!!!! So encourage new things to go fast, don't discourage based on what your inbread cousins' uncle has told you.

169stang

Hey, I know that guy. That thair is my uncle bubba

SixtySix

I think the horse evaporated from severe beating

Sonic05

Bucky, the only person anybody believes on TMS. Hey, a C/T for him?


I don't follow this at all. Where you accelerating the same amount? I don't see how the trans is shifting 1-2, and looses 1k rpm one time, and 3k the next. The ratio between 1st and 2nd doesn't change, and it's not going to slip going into the next gear (at least it better not). Did you lift off the gas between shifts? I'm not being a jerk, I just want to understand what is going on there.

Something else I have wondered about, and maybe somebody has noticed this (I don't think my car has the power to make it obvious):
An auto trans has a torque converter . . . Duh . . . and that torque coverter has a stall speed, meaning, at a stop, the engine can spin up to a certain rpm before it "stalls" and cannot gain anymore rpm. So, I would think whether you are accelerating easy or hard, that stall speed would affect at what speed the trans must actually shift.

For example, you accelerate EASY to redline in 1st gear, and the cars speed is 40 mph, then you stop, and accelerate HARD up to redline in 1st, and the cars speed is 38 mph. Anybody have any thoughts?

distortion

I am a little late in responding, I think your question has been answered. Have you gone out in practiced yet?

acadian

Craig... not sure how you mixed that quote up but I didn't say that. I thin SixtySix did.

Bucky... Funny stuff, bro. And no, you haven't steered me wrong yet. I messed with manually shifting the auto today on the way to and from work, and it worked just fine. Someone said earlier in this thread that if you manually shift it, the tranny will shift whenever it wants to. Totally untrue. As soon as you go from 1 to 2, it immediately shifts. The cool thing about using the 1,2 and 3 is that you have immediate (and I mean immediate) throttle response when you hit the gas. When it's in D, it takes a second or two. So, I am sold. This is not something I'd do everyday, but it's good to know that I can have instant throttle response and be in a lower gear when I need to be. With this auto, you are in 4th at like 35 mph (just guessing... I haven' really checked). Thanks to everyone with real-time experience on the subject and it's great to know that we can make the driving experience in this car even more fun than it already is.

acadian

I am a little late in responding, I think your question has been answered. Have you gone out in practiced yet?
[/b][/quote]

Rob... yes, I just wrote in my post above this one that I tried it today. Experimented with upshifting and downshifting with great success.

Sonic05

Whoops, I had some editing issues there . . . fixed.

I think you may have been referring to me when you said somebody stated shifting manually made no difference in actual shift points. I was making a point that not all transmissions work the same, I never meant the '05 was that way. Sorry for any confusion. Actually, my Taurus will upshift when I do it manually, but it reacts waaaaay to slow to be useful. But, dropping it down to second in anticipation of acceleration saves a TON of time.

Manually shifting an auto has many advantages, as many will learn with experimentation. And with the new 100% computer controlled trans's, you will be hard pressed to do any damage no matter how hard you try. Heck, reverse is probably even locked out when moving, so no danger there.

Looks like Ford has gotten the auto trans right. Now I just hope I don't regret my decision to go manual.