Chevy van grade downshifting

[Scott S.]

do I keep it or do I disable it?

when going down a hill and the van senses that its on any kind of grade it downshifts and spins up the tranny to help slow you down. keep it or not?

 

[Mark Saiger]

do I keep it or do I disable it?

when going down a hill and the van senses that its on any kind of grade it downshifts and spins up the tranny to help slow you down. keep it or not?

I am keeping mine at this point....

First van I have had that does it....

Was surprise when it did it the first time....had to call my wife and tell her about it actually....

Yeah...she called me a nerd!

 

[Scott S.]

yeah It caught me off guard also. I'm keeping it for now, gonna wait and see how it acts on a slippery road when it downshifts. if it makes the van all squirrely then ill disable it. but if not them ill probably leave it.

 

[rwcarpet]

Haven't driven my new van yet. Picking up Wednesday. I know my wifes Terrain downshifts downhill or when slowing down.

 

[Able 1]

Down shifting should save some wear on the breaks, not sure I would be OK with it with a automatic trans..

 

[Goomer]

Besides saving your brakes, downshifting down-hill under snowy/icy conditions lessens the reliance on your brakes alone, especially with the added weight of equipment, and will allow for a smoother brake game, and will lessen the chances of losing control due to braking too hard or too erratically.

Personally, I am not sure I would want a computer fooking with my gears during slick winter conditions.

Lost art of winter driving.

 

[Scott S.]

Besides saving your brakes, downshifting down-hill under snowy/icy conditions lessens the reliance on your brakes alone, especially with the added weight of equipment, and will allow for a smoother brake game, and will lessen the chances of losing control due to by braking too hard or too erratically.

Personally, I am not sure I would want a computer fooking with my gears during slick winter conditions.

Lost art of winter driving.

yeah but it only slows down 2 tires. so will have to see if it works for me in the winter.

 

[Bryce C]

In the years that have passed since this became a common feature, have any of you found that it shortens the transmission life span?

 

[Dwain Ray]

do I keep it or do I disable it?

when going down a hill and the van senses that its on any kind of grade it downshifts and spins up the tranny to help slow you down. keep it or not?

I live in the country and going up and down in hilly areas is a pia with hill assist and 6 or 8 gears also with frankinstien(2020 extended express 2500 6L) i use manual shift (M on selector & +&- on selector handle)
It has a 6L90 6sp transmission i drive mostly in manual 5 which allows the transmission to normally operate in the first 5 gears but not go into 6th. I seldom use 6th gear unless on the freeway ( closest one is an hour away for me).When I'm going over mountainous (2lane not freeway) roads i drop down another 1 or 2 gears to maintain rpms of 18-2300 and prevent excessive gear hunt. Manual also turns off downshifting and down hill braking which i hate! If i still want downshifting i can activate the towing button and downshifting works but the other crap doesn't. What im eliminating is the constant gear hunting that the transmission does when left in drive. On my older chevys i would drive in D3

 

[Bryce C]

In my 2013 Chevy Express 2500 4.8L I can disengage grade braking by holding the trailer mode button in for 5 seconds. I have to redo that process every time I restart the vehicle, but the factory grade braking with the weight of the tm in the van is insane. There is no way I'd feel good driving like that all the time. I think the weight of the tm causes the grade braking sensor to down shift faster or further or something. I can't imagine they program it to be that hard on the transmission under normal load.

I manually down shift while descending hills, usually dropping only to 3rd gear, to take some burden off the brakes without taxing the transmission too much based on my feel of things. If I leave it in any manual gear it just stays in that gear the entire trip until I manually shift or pop it back into Drive.