Post a recent picture of your car

**Beef6** · 02-03-2014, 09:13 AM

Yeah we were lucky so far it hasn't been bad, they did not touch the streets though so this one inch was the worst driving conditions we have had yet. I guess we are supposed to get his tomorrow night into Wednesday pretty badly

**95gto** · 02-03-2014, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by IPD

It is what it is; nostalgia supplants logic or rationale 6 ways to Sunday. Nobody cares that a 7 speed ATX can kick down up to 4 gears at once. Meh. I've never encountered "too much downshift"--even when slamming the pedal to the firewall. Even 1 second in a lower gear before it hits redline is sufficient justification for using that gear, imho--especially when shifts take less than 1/10th of a second.

Nostalgia has nothing to do with it, the lack of correct execution in the face of reduced user control is the problem. If the car is going take over a process for me it better do a better job at executing that job than I would. You are too hung up on how quickly the device executes the physical gear change and are ignoring the slow response of the TCU when it comes to making proper gear selection choices. The concept of changing gears encompasses the entire process of picking a gear and then executing the gear change, if you rule at one and suck at the other you are at best mediocre at the overall process.

If you think the TCU for our cars does a good job then I think that fundamentally outlines the basis of our differing opinions.

**IPD** · 02-03-2014, 05:28 PM

Good, not great. I'm sure you've gotten YEARS more experience with F/W4A33's in 3/s's than I do though.

To be fair, it's kinda hard not to select a proper gear, the fewer gears there are. As I said, I've never had any complaints about PWR mode. Shooter can speak to this, he's driven my car. It uses a very different algorithm from ECON mode.

There certainly is room for improvement though, and on that note, I agree with you.

**95gto** · 02-04-2014, 10:20 AM

Originally Posted by IPD

Good, not great. I'm sure you've gotten YEARS more experience with F/W4A33's in 3/s's than I do though.

To be fair, it's kinda hard not to select a proper gear, the fewer gears there are. As I said, I've never had any complaints about PWR mode. Shooter can speak to this, he's driven my car. It uses a very different algorithm from ECON mode.

There certainly is room for improvement though, and on that note, I agree with you.

What does "years of experience" with upgraded clutch packs in an ATX have to do with being able to asses the performance an ATX system (trans, TCU, torque converter, etc)?? I will gladly admit I don't have years of experience with upgraded ATX internals but last time I checked it doesn't matter how good the guts of the system are if the brain controlling the system is still riding the short bus.

And though your statement about fewer gears making it easier to find the right gear is accurate relative to the specific transaxle, what it ignores is that you make each gear worse at overall performance in favor of wider performance range. This is great for simplicity but is in the opposite direction of performance. So thanks for making my point for me.

I'm sure in another 10 years this conversation will go differently as the "good" paddle/tap shift systems will be more prevalent across the entire range of vehicles on the market. When that time comes we can shift the discussion from system performance to driver involvement.