# Hard shifts normal?



## wsutard1 (Dec 28, 2018)

Hello all, new Atlas owner here. About a week into it, love the vehicle except for one thing, I'm experiencing what I would call hard shifts from the transmission. At lower speeds/gears I am physically being moved in my chair by the shifts. I came from a Ram 1500 and never experienced shifts like these. 

I haev played around with the drive mode to see if that makes a difference and it does not. Eco, Normal or Sport all feel the same on the shifts. 

Prior to going into the service center about this I wanted to see if the community thinks these kind of shifts are normal for the Atlas. 

Additionally, in the 20-25 mph range the transmission seems to not be able to make up its mind on what gear it wants. Combine this with the hard shifts and its rather annoying at this speed range.


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## RCDheliracer (Jan 7, 2012)

wsutard1 said:


> Hello all, new Atlas owner here. About a week into it, love the vehicle except for one thing, I'm experiencing what I would call hard shifts from the transmission. At lower speeds/gears I am physically being moved in my chair by the shifts. I came from a Ram 1500 and never experienced shifts like these.
> 
> I haev played around with the drive mode to see if that makes a difference and it does not. Eco, Normal or Sport all feel the same on the shifts.
> 
> ...


Is it shifting hard all the time or just some of the time? I just had mine into service for this reason but it would only hard shift under certain circumstances. They performed a reset on the transmission so it will re-learn shift points based on my driving and not the 450 miles of not my driving it had when I purchased it. So far the reset seems to have helped. I'll post some updates after I get some miles on it.


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## wsutard1 (Dec 28, 2018)

Its doing it all the time but you can only really feel it under 40mph. 

Interesting on the transmission reset, maybe that will help with the erratic shifting between 20-25.


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## RCDheliracer (Jan 7, 2012)

wsutard1 said:


> Its doing it all the time but you can only really feel it under 40mph.
> 
> Interesting on the transmission reset, maybe that will help with the erratic shifting between 20-25.


I would definitely take it into service an have them check it mechanically and try the reset. It's under warranty so the only thing you're out is time to get it there


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## GTINC (Jan 28, 2005)

wsutard1 said:


> Hello all, new Atlas owner here. About a week into it, love the vehicle except for one thing, I'm experiencing what I would call hard shifts from the transmission. At lower speeds/gears I am physically being moved in my chair by the shifts. I came from a Ram 1500 and never experienced shifts like these.
> 
> I haev played around with the drive mode to see if that makes a difference and it does not. Eco, Normal or Sport all feel the same on the shifts.
> 
> ...


How different is it to the one you test drove before purchase?


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## Andre VW (Dec 12, 2018)

Congratulations on the new vehicle. I just barely went through my break in. The new car issue you think you are having, requires you to just drive it more. After 1500 miles, my shift quality went from “smooth but I can see you messed up a few times there” to “i cant even tell you are even upshifting anymore if you close my eyes and ears”. 2 things are occuring in your brand new transmission that will eventually optimize to reach peak shift performance. 

1. Break In of gears, break in of clutch pack friction material for each gearset and break in of solenoid actuation valves. I would say these need at least 1500 miles before things are at the point where the moving pieces are mated well to each other and friction material in the clutch packs is broken in. 

2. Adaptive transmission is learning your driving style and also learning about the transmission itself. Once trans oil temps and other parameters are in normal range in your drive, the shifts constantly get monitored by the transmssion control module software and every shift the transmission makes it continues to learn on how to make it better. Each shift requires at least 2 valve actuations and it is the timing between and feathering of these valves that define your shift quality. You can help it learn more efficiently by keeping a steady constant throttle pressure during acceleration and not try to hunt your foot around thinking your foot angle is going to improve the next shift. In addition, maneuvers such as accelerating from stop to 8th gear and then back down to a stop again are best. If you want to also give the transmission more shifts to learn from, use Manual Mode and go upshift and downshift through gears at different throttle loads and different RPMs. Vary it like you do as is you were driving manual transmission. Even hold it in a lower gear as you decelerate to mate the other face of the physical gear teeth. This manual mode is actually good to do for your engine break in also otherwise the automatic just loves jumping to the next gear and keep RPMs low for fuel economy. 

You will notice the shift quality in the higher speed gears 5-8 improve more quicker than 1-4 due to the fact that most of your driving will be putting a higher quantity of upshifts and downshifts in the 5-8 range that the software can learn from. Even for adaptive software, practice makes perfect. 

Enjoy the car.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


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## Andre VW (Dec 12, 2018)

As for the transmission not knowing what gear it wants in 20-25 mph range, I will admit the programming in regular non-sport mode just loves to upshift to a higher gear as soon as it can. And so when you suddenly need to accelerate again, its going to downshift a couple gears. As you drive more your driving style will subconciously adapt and the software will adapt and hopefully there can be a middle ground that will help it. I used to get this scenario myself but have subconciously adapted my driving since I dont seem to get it anymore. Ive noticed my wife does run into it a few times but she doesnt have much seat time yet so Im sure she will subconciously adapt herself too. These modern day 8 9 10 speeds are phenomenal in what they do from a technology and efficiency standpoint and will take some getting used to sensation wise compared to a typical 5 speed auto that uses one or 2 gears at most from 20-80mph with sloppy inefficient torque converters that dampen any shifting.


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## Hfqkhal (Oct 14, 2018)

Andre VW said:


> As for the transmission not knowing what gear it wants in 20-25 mph range, I will admit the programming in regular non-sport mode just loves to upshift to a higher gear as soon as it can. And so when you suddenly need to accelerate again, its going to downshift a couple gears. As you drive more your driving style will subconciously adapt and the software will adapt and hopefully there can be a middle ground that will help it. I used to get this scenario myself but have subconciously adapted my driving since I dont seem to get it anymore. Ive noticed my wife does run into it a few times but she doesnt have much seat time yet so Im sure she will subconciously adapt herself too. These modern day 8 9 10 speeds are phenomenal in what they do from a technology and efficiency standpoint and will take some getting used to sensation wise compared to a typical 5 speed auto that uses one or 2 gears at most from 20-80mph with sloppy inefficient torque converters that dampen any shifting.
> 
> 
> Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk


I agree with your assessment. For me the first 1K miles was easy going (my style is not fast take offs and being light footed on the gas pedal. In the first 1K not once did I get a hard shift and always been perfect. Once I passed the 1K mark I started to be a bit more demanding of the Atlas and have changed the settings from Eco to Sport and to Normal and I even did my own settings. Also, here and there when on a highway I do the **** down to Sport just before having to pass to get the extra quickness it needs. Since then I only had one hard shift and that was caused by me. It was downshifting while slowing down and then I took off hard that cause a harder and quicker shift ( this is no different that any other automatic that I have driven) and it actually reminded of the stick shift days).

My driving style has given a range of about 360 miles range on a full gas tank (70/30 local/Highway driving mix). I actually drove down to the end before refueling as this gives me the future confidence as to how far it can go and better estimate my refueling process. The only thing left for me is a nice long trip to gauge the full tank range on the highway.

I can honestly say that every car I drove was treated the same as I did with the Atlas and was able to get the most of them. One should relay learn how far to have the gas pedal pressed as it has range for the same speed level. experiment and find the sweet point and lean it (where it becomes your driving habit) and every one would get what they want out of their car. Give you and example, when I drove to NY (in my prior SUV) I got an avg highway mileage of 28 mpg while when I took a break and some one else drove got an avg of 24 mpg for the same avg speed and time driven. On the Atlas the longest distance I drove was about 100 miles and my displayed avg (highway driving after resets) showed me 27.1 mpg with an avg speed of 59 mph.


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## mhjett (Oct 16, 2000)

FWIW, at first I noticed abrupt shifts out of first gear in particular, but now, with about 6600 mi on the odometer, it shifts noticeably smoother. Andre VW's detailed explanations above seem pretty on-point. You could take it in to a dealer but risk getting the "it's normal diagnosis" but, as the warranty is so long and if I were you, I'd just keep driving and see what happens.


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## wsutard1 (Dec 28, 2018)

Thanks for the insight everyone. I can tell it already getting better. I am very sensitive to my vehicles so I tend to feel, hear everything they are doing. I’m going to ride it out some more and worry if I get to 2000 miles and still feel the weird shifts.


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## Enrique VW (Jan 28, 2020)

*Atlas hard shifts*

I was reading this thread and i was so glad I was not the only one that had this issue. I have a 2019 Atlas SEL V6 and have experienced the hard shifts especially in the low 3 gears and when starting after a stop. The hard shifts are not all the times, especially none when driving manually and less also in the sport drive mode. I have 1200 miles, so i will continue to drive it and especially not drive out a way i would not actually drive the car. Meaning i will drive at my style and hopefully it will learn it and smooth out the shifts as time goes by. IO did bring it back to the dealer at 300 miles, and they told me they drove it in the different modes and did not find anything unusual.
I also have experidnced a noise sometimes like a hard breath out. They told me it was the air pump coming on, that it was also normal. Any comments?
Also once I park the car inside the garage, on the rear there is like a noice of a electric motor going, for a few minutes after the engine is off. Any clue what this could be?
Thanks everyone.


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## emdy (Nov 18, 2019)

My shifting seemed to smooth out around after around 2k miles, on my 2019 atlas


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## GTINC (Jan 28, 2005)

emdy said:


> My shifting seemed to smooth out around after around 2k miles, on my 2019 atlas


That has more to do with you learning to use the transmission, not the transmission itself.


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## usuario_b (Feb 24, 2020)

Did it work out for you guys? What was the outcome?


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