When I downshift using the paddle shifter on my XF-S, there's a moment when it feels like the transmission completely disengages before the lower gear kicks in. It's quite noticable and feels unnatural. Before my XF, I owned two XJRs (2004 and 2006) and downshifting was silky smooth. Anyone else experience this with their XF?

 

The XF uses the lock up clutch in the torque converter for all shifts above first gear. I am not familiar with earlier versions of this drivetrain but I do notice quite a bit of activity inn the ZF box that is very unautomatic. The XF is my very first automatic equipped car (in almost 40 years of driving) and the ZF box convinced me that the days of the fully manual shift gearbox are essentially over.

I definitely feel the lock up clutch engaging and disengaging during shifts whether paddle activated or automatic. In SPORT mode this becomes quite plain. Also, if you lift off abruptly while in automatic mode the ZF box holds the gear for a short period before shifting up which gives you the engine braking effect of a manual.

Occasionally it seems as if the ZF box software is not quite perfect and the transmission seems to hesitate for the merest of fractions of a second before completing the shift.

My experience with the ZF box has been very good. The shifting is so intuitive I rarely use the paddles even though this capability is what convinced me I no longer benefitted from manual shifting. In fact, the only times I use paddle shifting is when I wish more control when cornering or continuously when pressing on when travelling on what the Brits call a "B" road and we Canadians just call a crappy road. Fun to drive but slow. Then the paddle shift ZF box becomes sheer delight as it holds the gears through corners and allows engine braking and fully locked clutch acceleration. If you select SPORT it also holds the selected gear until you reach redline and then auto upshifts for you and it also auto downshifts when engine rpm drop too low. It is pure magic.

If yours isn't pure magic then I'd get it checked. The ZF box is one of the XF's best features.

 

When you use the paddles for downshifting in the XF the software actually blips the throttle for you to match engine speed to the lower gear. That is not programmed into the XJ. I am assuming that is the difference you are experiencing, not a problem just different.

 

My sense is that you're both right. On one hand, I understand the throttle blip process, but on the other, no one that felt the momentary "free fall" that occurs just before the lower grear engages on my XF would call it "pure magic."

I took my XF to the dealer for a small moonroof noise issue, and while there asked him about the downshift. The service manager said that since I only had the car for 200 miles at that point, I should keep driving it because the car actually "learns and adapts" to your driving style during the first 2,000 miles. If after that I still had an issue, I should bring it back and they'd take a look at it. That was the first I'd heard about the learning and adapting process. Sounds a little like marriage.

 

Many electronically controlled automatics have an adaptation or learning facility.

Rest assured that your ZF transmission will adapt to your driving style in due course.

It has been my observation and experience that in marriage it is the driver who adapts to the transmission......

 

Jagular,

There are limits. When I first married, I had an '80 RX7 with a 5-speed which I vainly tried to teach my wife how to drive it. No joy, so I traded it in for a '79 280ZX 2+2 with an automatic.

Mike

 

Ah, yes, I was perhaps too obscure. In marriage, the man who becomes happily married is the man who adapts to his wife.

As you relate, it is less stressful to adapt the car to the wife than the other way around

I am blessed with a wife who refuses to drive an automatic unless forced to by circumstance. This woman learned to drive the summer we were married and on an automatic car. Since our marriage she has driven nothing but manual shift cars.

She dislikes the XF mainly because it is an automatic!

 

Move to a city with lots of traffic and crazy hills -- like San Francisco. That will turn even die hard manual shft junkies into lovers of automatic transmissions.