Autmatic Shifting?

[greenlightracer]

I find my self bring the car down to 2 or 3 gear to get more power when going 30-75 MPH. in 4th gear there is NO power between 70-80, so I have to shift into 3rd (and if I don't, it takes 3 or 4 seconds for the car to do it itself). Or sometimes, I upshift manually from a stop. My question is, is this bad for the tranny? Also, is there any potential problems with these boxes?

[Aether]

How can you shift it yourself? Are you talking about flooring the gas to downshift then letting off once you're in the right gear? That might wear a bit on your high-pressure fuel lines coming off the rail, but as long as the fluid's kept up I don't think it'd do too much damage to the actual transmission.

Or do you mean something like going from D to 1 or 2?
That you shouldn't do unless you're really going slow.

I don't think any E30s came with that semi-automatic thing.

[Fox]

even if you do change gears with the selector the car will automatically shift when it wants when there is not enough centrifigal torque and will shift down to the next gear. Steptronic is the only auto you can really shift on.

[greenlightracer]

I mean I go from D to 1 to 2 etc. And your wrong, fox, the car merely cuts off gas once it hits redline. It never upshifts if ur in 1.

[jtorres]

I too have an automatic too, and I do this all the time...in fact, this is how i drive. I figure its some sort of envy of those stick drivers, but my car is in such perfect condition, that I can't find myself getting rid of it and risking getting a stick in not so great condition. Anyway, what we mean by shifting is this: the order on the gear thing is P R N D 3 2 1. The owners manual says something along the lines of using 1 and 2 for hill climbing and such, and 3 for "3-4-3" traffic, which is like when your driving down main street, and your car, depending on the speed and such, keeps going from 3rd to 4th, and dropping down to 3rd...its very annoying and all automatics do it. So to stop that, you just keep it in 3rd. So that you have a better idea of why we do this, it works like this. When you drive your car in D all the time, the gears change at about 2500 rpm or some sucky point. So if you're trying to do something quick, or go around someone, you never really get any power because the gears change at such low rpm's. Instead, what I do and I guess others do is this. If we're stopped, we bring it down to 1. Then we accelerate until we feel like going to second, then third, then D. I find that i get the most power out of my car between 3000 and 4500 rpm, but since driving it in D won't let us get to such high rpm's, we do it ourselves. Sometimes, for example, you're on the freeway, and your going pretty slow because someone is slowly driving in front of you. Well, then you can bring it back down to 2 and you get a nice kick...the car takes off on you like a Concord. This, i'm sure, is more than probably not good for the transmission, but it feels damn good. Also, in 1, if you redline it, it will kick up to 2, even if you keep it in 1. Its some sort of safety thing, which makes sense. And if you're in D and want to take it down to 3, but you accidently skip it and go straight to 2 or 1 (maybe you're running from the cops or your ex-girlfriend) if the rpm is redline in 2 or 1, it will only go down to 3. So in other words, you can learn how to drive you're car in a similar fashion to that of the steptronic, although its nothing like it at all.

[nukeall]

See i gotts a e21, There is no godd damm 3 gear mines came with the shitty 3 speed crap yes and it does make that humming sound in the freeway.....on its last gear but in the streets i manual shift from 1 rev up to 3000-3500 then shift to 2 nd....rev up to almost the same or more if i need to burn some honda's hehe then ugly ass D .. lamest gear of em all soo i guess youre guys are lucky to have that extra gear.

[BimmerKris]

my sisters 325 has an S mode under the D what exaclty does this do. I haven't driven it yet, so havent had the chance to experimant with it. I'm assuming it's like sport mode or something.

[jtorres]

funny thing is, i always thought i was the only person out there that does this automatic shfiting. I figured that if it was bad for my car, the transmission would eventually go out and i'd make it a manual transmission (yes, i'm willing to spend the money some day to do it...) neat to see that there are others like me out there.