sam530

When driving the freeways, I usually keep the car in manual Sport mode and use the paddle shifters...Driving home tonight (going about 70 mph) all of a sudden I noticed that the tranny had shifted into auto D? Still Sport mode but no more manual. I moved it back to manual and the lever actually kept moving back to auto. I was pushing the car a bit hard but nothing out of the ordinary. After a few minutes, it was fine again. Has anyone else experienced this? I'm guessing the car shutdown the manual sport mode due to excessive rpm's/speed???

beaker

When you shifted into manual mode, did you make a gear change? If I remember correctly, if you don't change gears, it will revert back to normal "D" mode after a little while; making the change prevents it from doing that.

Rudy

If you shift to the left gate (sport mode), it will not go back to D after any amount of time. What you're referring to is a situation where a paddle was used while in D mode...

calpalmer

And, that is pretty convenient, too! My normal driving through the city/highway mix is in DS mode (use MS mode when enthusiastic about our mountainous terrain around here). When in DS but wanting more control, flipping the paddles for that stretch of driving is super and I'm fine with it then reverting back to DS mode.

I guess what I'm saying is, I like pretty much everything about this Sport Automatic Transmission, and would never have guessed that until I took delivery.

Cal

sam530

This is how the SAT is supposed to work and for 20K miles I've never had a problem...I hope this isn't a tranny issue!

Rudy

I doubt that it's a tranny issue -- if anything, it's a shifter issue. I know they've had some issues with the shifters already (my car will be getting it's second replacement soon) so my bet is that the problem isn't a major one.

Keep in mind that the gearbox itself is mechanically disconnected from the shift lever. The only thing that can make the lever move is the embedded electronics in the shifter itself or some other electronic module that would be easily replaced...

kscarrol

Not to hijack the thread, but what is causing you to get a second replacement on the shifter Rudy? A repeat of you first issue?

Rudy

Sort of, but not really...

The first shifter would sometimes not snap back to the right after pressing "P" but when the tech was diagnosing another problem where the car was not going into sleep mode properly (which, of course, was causing other problems), it was determined that the shifter was the module keeping the car awake. They replaced the shift lever and things were fine for a while.

Now, I have a similar issue where something keeps the car from sleeping but only if I open and close the trunk so I don't think it's related to the shift lever. The reason I'm getting a new shift lever this time is because now, it almost never snaps back to the right after pressing "P"...

The technician told me he thinks they've modified the shifter part (can't be 100% sure though) since the earlier version(s) that I had so maybe the third time will be the charm.

beaker

Ahhhh... that's it. Thanks for the correction.

My shifter used to snap back when I pressed P, but it stopped doing that a few months ago. No other problems, but perhaps I'll get it looked at anyway.