Cutlass Supreme Quad 4 Automatic Transmission

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Pentastar - 12 Jan 2006 06:13 GMT

I had a '91 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme w/ a Quad 4 engine 5 years ago.
It had a digital dash display. That was one FUN car, but too bad we had
to sell it since it had ignition problems that no one could figure out
causing the car to cut out randomly. We dumped $$$ trying to fix that
mug.

Anyway, the car had a 3-spd automatic transmission with tq lockup.

It had a floor-mounted shifter, P R N D 2 1.

I had wondered, if it was ok to manually shift one of those automatic
transmissions in those cars, or in any cars with the Quad 4 engine. I'm
thinking that it would have been more fun in this car.

What I'm talking about is:

>From a light, you flick the shifter to "1".

You take off and rev the engine way up to almost redline and force 1st
to a high speed.
Then you flick the lever to "2" and do the same thing forcing 2nd gear
to as high a speed as possible.
After that, you go into D, DRIVE, to put yourself into 3rd gear, go to
whatever speed you like, and then cruise on your merry way.

Then on the HWY, you manually downshift to "2" if you want for quick
passing. Then bump it back to "D" to get back to 3rd gear.

When I had my '91 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme, though, I never really
manually shifted like the above way, but I used to just POP that thing
in D1 when going down the highway for quick accelerations at times like
from 45 to 60+ MPH. I didn't have a tach, so I had no idea what RPM's
the motor turned at. But I used to "do that" because my friend, twice,
told me to do so to challenge some vehicles on the highway. One of the
times with him, I did it because I was mad, out of anger. I did it two
other times for the fun of it.

So, I was asking if it's ok to shift a GM 4T60E automatic transmission
like a manual transmission.

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Mike Marlow - 12 Jan 2006 22:14 GMT

> I had a '91 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme w/ a Quad 4 engine 5 years ago.
> It had a digital dash display. That was one FUN car, but too bad we had
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> transmissions in those cars, or in any cars with the Quad 4 engine. I'm
> thinking that it would have been more fun in this car.

It's OK to "manually" shift any automatic transmission. You should pay
attention to the speed at which you down shift though.

> What I'm talking about is:
> >From a light, you flick the shifter to "1".
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> After that, you go into D, DRIVE, to put yourself into 3rd gear, go to
> whatever speed you like, and then cruise on your merry way.

Yeah you can do it, but you do understand that you're subjecting the tranny
to abuses it was not designed to support over the long run, right?

> Then on the HWY, you manually downshift to "2" if you want for quick
> passing. Then bump it back to "D" to get back to 3rd gear.

This would fall into the category of stupid. Second is not "passing gear".
Don't expect to get years of trouble free life out of your tranny with this
move.

> So, I was asking if it's ok to shift a GM 4T60E automatic transmission
> like a manual transmission.

Yeah - like I said, you can "manually" shift it, but I suspect your intended
method of manually shifting is not the same as the design engineer's, and
you've got a fairly short lived tranny in your car.

Signature

-Mike-
mmarlowREMOVE@alltel.net

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Al Bundy - 13 Jan 2006 00:16 GMT

> > So, I was asking if it's ok to shift a GM 4T60E automatic transmission
> > like a manual transmission.
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
> -Mike-
> mmarlowREMOVE@alltel.net

Everything you said is true Mike, but eventually the poster will turn
17-18 and start paying some of his own bills. Then his abusive thinking
may change.

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Olaf - 13 Jan 2006 05:00 GMT

<snip>

> So, I was asking if it's ok to shift a GM 4T60E automatic transmission
> like a manual transmission.

Shifting the transmission like this per se won't hurt the transmission.
Driving the car like a race car certainly will, in any gear.

They do make automatic transmissions that are designed to by used vaguely
like you describe. I think they're called slap-shift, and they can be driven
in fully automatic or slap-shift mode.

Your transmission is not slap-shift, and it will not necessarily shift on
demand like a slap shift. When you 'manually' shift from first to second it
will shift to second practically exactly as if it would have been driven in
drive. You will still have to let off the gas some before the transmission
will actually shift unless you do have the engine past the red-line. In
drive, the transmission will usually shift to the next higher gear, even if
you leave it completely floored, just before the engine red-lines.

You may save some time shifting manually between 1st and second because when
you let off the gas for the tranny to shift it will already know it is
definitely going to second gear and won't have to wait for the governor in
the transmission to signal for the correct gear (since it's not designed to
'think' the driver is going to be driving like a race car maniac it will
generally try to go to third, from red-line in first gear, until you get the
pedal to the floor again).

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