hello all!

is it normal for the autobox to downshift when going up a hill when gas is applied? today I entered this freeway entrance ramp that happened to be on a pretty steep hill, not too steep, but steep enough to make yer car guzzle lots of gas for that extra power. well, I'm pretty lightfooted, so I eased on the gas until 4th kicked in but then it downshifted and then once I got to the appropriate speed, I guess it upshifted. hmmm, it's been a while I took this hilly freeway part to understand the shifting of the autobox when going uphill, but is that normal? do some of you manually downshift when going up a hill in yer car with an auto for that extra climbing power? thanks.

I think you need to drive a car with standard shift for a while to understand
the reason for different gear ratios.
It has to downshift to have enough torque to bring the car up the hill.
If you had enough engine torque to handle each and every situation you
wouldn't need a transmission.
--
George Downs Bartlesville, Heart of the USA!

Your transmission's behavior sounds quite normal.

On our 940 with a virtually identical trans, I sometimes use the OD lockout button to manually downshift the trans to 3rd. Otherwise when it hits a steeper hill, it tends to stay in 4th gear until the gas pedal is down pretty far and the RPM's have dropped a bunch. It then automatically shifts down to third with a mighty roar (but not much else) and the tach soars. I prefer in some cases to anticipate this and manually downshift a bit earlier with smaller throttle opening and less commotion.

Like Jim, I also sometimes lockout the OD to use engine braking when descending a long hill.

But presumably the engineers knew their stuff and you won't hurt anything by letting the trans do it all.
--
Bob (son's 81-244GL B21F, dtr's 83-244DL B23F, 'my' 94-944 B230FD; plus grocery-getter Dodge minivan, hobbycar 77 MGB, and numerous old motorcycles)

As I understand the auto tranny, the shifts depend on a combination of car speed and the position of the accelerator pedal. I'm leaving out both vacuum modulation and computer controls which the 240 doesn't use.

When you are accelerating up the hill the tranny will downshift when you either press down on the accelerator or the car speed drops to a shift point. It is normal and necessary for the tranny to downshift in the conditions you describe.

There's usually no need to manually downshift, you can make the downshift happen sooner by pressing farther down on the accelerator. I sometimes manually downshift on a down-hill run when I want to keep a slower speed such as coming downhill into town with a school speed zone at the bottom odf the hill.