Hard Trans Downshift

[jcollett]

what up guys -

got a question about the trans in my d1. the truck has only 79K miles on it. here's the deal... when i slow to a stop, the trans slams into second from third, and then proceeds to downshift to first smoothly when the truck is almost stopped. how can i stop the hard downshift? any ideas??

 

[RoverChic]

Hey Josh..I have been told that is "normal" My 1998 D1 does it too. Its almost like backlash, I can really feel it @ the 51 miles per hour mark..But I do believe that is the torque converter locking for better fuel economy. Now that I think about it more, I feel the slam too but more so when stopping from 2-1 gears ..

 

[jcollett]

just to clear things up -- the hard downshift from 3rd to 2nd is also acompanied by a loud thud, sorta like the sound the disco makes when engaging from reverse to drive / drive to reverse. may be to torque converter disengaging or somthin?

 

[Gumarcel]

mine does that, about 15000 miles ago I got a new ******, did the same thing once it was put in. It is normal, but then again somebody went off on this long tirade once telling me the click between R and D was not normal.

 

[chizychiz]

Yeah I posted a thread a couple of days ago about the same thing happening on my 99 DII. Mine does it going from 2nd to 1st. From what I hear its pretty normal for both DI and DII's, but you might want to check your fluid level in your transmission or maybe even go ahead and change it. Land Rover recommends changing your trans fluid at about 60,000. I am at 50,000 and I think I'm going to go ahead and do a filter change and fluid change.

*J*

 

[Disco Mike]

Josh,
You might want to consider flushing your transmission, hard down shifts are controled by the trannys computer and the valves in the valve body. You may find that your valve body is varnished up and causing the valves to stick, causing excess pressure on the transmission.
The one way you can verift this is to have someone plug into the ECU and scan the valve body pressures on both the up shift and down shifts.
Mike J.

 

[Rocky]

Are you slowing down from high speed or similar? I've always suspected that when letting the speed drop eg when about to exit an interstate, that the box delays any change down and then drops two gears, causing a major clonk.