Jason, thanks for the reply.
History on this car is as follows. The transmission is a new Volvo remanufactered installed by the dealer at 125k miles (cost $2500), now has 176k miles. So trans now has over 50k on it. I have drained the trans fluid every 20k and replace with Mobil 1 ATF. The last drain was 10k miles ago. To get it shift real smooth I would extremely loosen the kickdown cable. Up to 2 weeks ago it was shifting very smooth. It would get to 4th gear very quickly and smoothly, it used more turbo to handle the lug of higher gears but overall effect was smooth. Kickdowns when needed and mountain driving were fine. I took the car into my indy Volvo repair shop to have the ECC A/C and heater fixed. He had to put in a new ECC programer and backflush the heater core. As the voltage regular has been acting up for some time and I replace that with a new Bosch VR. AFter getting the car back the shifting is now annoying, 1st to 2nd is smooth and early, 2nd to 3rd is a long winding out..high rpm..for a long time...then a slightly hard shift, 3rd to 4th is not as bad. Could these A/C and electical fixes have anything to do with the shifting? Is there a learning computer somewhere that just needs to relearn?