You, hikingmike, are awesome! I thought I was the only automatic driver who put so much thought into observing shift points.
So, in order:
Coasting:
Give it a little gas to increase speed and force an upshift, then get off the gas, as when going down hill. It might not work at first, but I've read on the forums that the ECU learns the driver's habits. Eventually it will figure out you want to coast and upshift.
And give it more miles to get used to you. As the engine aged, my '08 automatic upshifted and coasted more willingly.
Strange revving:
Dunno; simplest explanation would be the gearbox hunting between 3rd and 4th. Same thing; give it time to break in or just use S-mode to force it into 3rd. Maybe rowing up to "S4" will help convince it to pick 4th instead of hunting.
Untimely downshifts:
This is interesting, because our transmission is actually a point of disagreement among the journalistic reviews. Some like the quick shifts, while others find it twitchy and slushy with exactly that tendency to be in high gear at low speed. My only suggestion is to use S-mode to force it into 2nd; eventually, the car should start to shift differently.
2nd gear, sluggish, then zoom:
I believe it's a limitation of having only 4 gears. In that sense, this issue is the same problem as above.
The simplest way I can put it is that: 2nd gear is the only speed gear, from 10mph to 65mph. No matter what, 4th is just top gear with barely any passing power, 3rd is barely short enough to climb hills with, and that leaves us with 2nd, and 2nd is long enough to provide acceleration at almost all common speeds.
Also, the automatic transmission downshifts into 1st. It's hard to realize, because that rush of speed after the shifting delay feels like 2nd, but in fact it's 1st.
If you have a chance, take an on-ramp at 20 and floor it up to 55. At the starting speed, the car will already be in 3rd or 4th doing about 1500rpm. Once you floor it, you'll get a shift delay, and then a walloping pull of acceleration with the engine quickly spinning up to 6500rpm, then another wallop for the upshift. That initial wallop was actually 1st gear. I've counted up, and 1st gear tops out at about 30mph, 2nd gear never really tops out, but once I let off the gas, it upshifts twice, to 3rd and then 4th, both of which gears don't really offer much passing power.
So, in order:
Coasting:
Give it a little gas to increase speed and force an upshift, then get off the gas, as when going down hill. It might not work at first, but I've read on the forums that the ECU learns the driver's habits. Eventually it will figure out you want to coast and upshift.
And give it more miles to get used to you. As the engine aged, my '08 automatic upshifted and coasted more willingly.
Strange revving:
Dunno; simplest explanation would be the gearbox hunting between 3rd and 4th. Same thing; give it time to break in or just use S-mode to force it into 3rd. Maybe rowing up to "S4" will help convince it to pick 4th instead of hunting.
Untimely downshifts:
This is interesting, because our transmission is actually a point of disagreement among the journalistic reviews. Some like the quick shifts, while others find it twitchy and slushy with exactly that tendency to be in high gear at low speed. My only suggestion is to use S-mode to force it into 2nd; eventually, the car should start to shift differently.
2nd gear, sluggish, then zoom:
I believe it's a limitation of having only 4 gears. In that sense, this issue is the same problem as above.
The simplest way I can put it is that: 2nd gear is the only speed gear, from 10mph to 65mph. No matter what, 4th is just top gear with barely any passing power, 3rd is barely short enough to climb hills with, and that leaves us with 2nd, and 2nd is long enough to provide acceleration at almost all common speeds.
Also, the automatic transmission downshifts into 1st. It's hard to realize, because that rush of speed after the shifting delay feels like 2nd, but in fact it's 1st.
If you have a chance, take an on-ramp at 20 and floor it up to 55. At the starting speed, the car will already be in 3rd or 4th doing about 1500rpm. Once you floor it, you'll get a shift delay, and then a walloping pull of acceleration with the engine quickly spinning up to 6500rpm, then another wallop for the upshift. That initial wallop was actually 1st gear. I've counted up, and 1st gear tops out at about 30mph, 2nd gear never really tops out, but once I let off the gas, it upshifts twice, to 3rd and then 4th, both of which gears don't really offer much passing power.