Hi all, so dynamic mode on, lever to the left for sport shift, car still downshift automatically when you push it to the floor. Have done a bit of reading and appears this is how it is designed to behave, but it is slightly annoying to me. If I choose to be in full manual mode, I want to be in full control, instead of pressing the pedal and suddenly the car downshifts and lurches forward. Any way to disable this?

 

Shift the car into "S" mode on the gear selector. This should limit auto upshift/downshift if you have this option enabled for Dynamic Mode.

 

yup sport mode enabled, still will downshift - if I'm cruising at 3000 rpm in 4th and floor it, it downshifts to 3rd even when s and dynamic are engaged. BTW this is a 2015 R, not sure if different years behave differently.

 

OK, so, you want to stomp it, but not really maximize acceleration. You'd probably come closer in Drive vs Sport, and not punch it so hard, since Sport thinks you actually want to be aggressive. Do you also want it to stay in 4th when you pull up to the next stop light, forcing you to be truly manual?

 

Yes, there’s a kickdown switch on the throttle pedal - I think you can feel it when it’s almost to the floor. If you hit that, I think it pretty much overrides everything. Don’t know if a tune could disable it. If it’s a mechanical switch, perhaps it could be disconnected. But I suspect it’s electronic.

 

Yep. I want to be in control of the car - in reality, in much of my driving, I don't want to maximize acceleration because the car is too damned fast But I'd like to, say, be at 3000 rpm and put the pedal down and hear the motor load up, feel the torque of the motor build. It's partially an experience thing, and partially a "whoa this thing just took off on its own when I expected it to stay in the selected gear" thing. It can be pretty violent. Mostly it's probably because I'm not an 'automatic guy', I come from a long history of manual cars, so I'm probably trying to replicate part of that experience with this car - if I can't disable it, then I'm sure I'll get used to it. Regarding the upshift, not as big of a deal what it does as I'm not in the business of leaving the car in too high of a gear and lugging the motor, but I don't think that's part of the same mechanism anyways.

 

Yep pretty sure I could feel that as well, I wonder from a throttle position perspective if there's a real difference between just before the switch is engaged and actually to the floor - I'll reach out to Stuard at VAP and see if their transmission tune can change the behavior, been considering that anyways. I bought this car telling myself "I'm just going to leave it as is with no more mods", and here I'm already talking about transmission tunes and I have H&R springs on the way. It's a disease.

 

As far as I'm aware, the only way to get 'manual control' is to put the car into 'S' and then pull one of the paddles. At that point you will have control over the shifts. I would, however, pull a paddle first before going to 'S', as the car often revs higher in S than D.

 

Depending on how you configure it, you can get manual mode in D, too, although that will revert to auto if you don't touch the paddles for a while. In S you can also use the stick to shift - forward to shift down, back to shift up.

 

Yeah, the 'reverting back' is one of the reasons I didn't mention it as it stops becoming 'manual' after a short while, but definitely worth adding - as well as using the stick (though, I'll be honest, I haven't used that once in the 2 and a bit years I've had the car )

 

i was wondering about that on my car. Didn’t know that’s what it was and haven’t had the time to research it. Will have to test to verify now that I know what to expect. Thx

 

tested this yesterday...as long as u don't hit the kick down switch, car will stay in gear selected.

 

Yup! It's all the switch. Just have to be careful when pushing the accelerator to the floor. Slightly annoying but I'll adapt I'm sure

 

If you built a little doughnut/block on the floorboard, you could probably block the kick-down switch. Of course, it will ALWAYS block the switch, so you'd have to rely on the paddles/gear shift to do any urgent downshifts. But, I think that fits what you said. Just a thought.

I, personally, wouldn't be tempted to restrict the car, but I recognize you're dealing with the maximum horsepower / RWD combination, so sudden downshifts under power can get interesting. (In my V6-S, it's just part of the fun.)

 

They day I picked up my car from the dealer I was about a block away and had to make a U turn at a traffic light from the left turn lane. As I was doing so I accidentally lit the paddle and downshifted and then when I completed the turn and started to accelerate it took a few seconds to figure out why the car didn't automatically shift gears.

When I got home I programmed the settings so that the paddles would only operate when I moved the gearshift lever to the left to put it in the sport mode. That makes the most sense for me and after driving the car for a while like that it became almost second nature to put the car in Dynamic mode and move the lever to Sport when I wanted to drive the car in a spirited mode.

 

This is a great idea - I've also accidentally hit a paddle a few times recently when turning, and had some unexpected behavior with shifts (or lack thereof) shortly afterward. Such a nuisance.