I do a lot of driving in the 55-65mph range, and every once in a while I'll get stuck behind someone driving undesirably slow. I know about the trouble the 4T65 has with 4th gear. Quote from BillBoost37:

My question is, what exactly is the "proper" way to downshift manually in this car? Say I'm going about 60mph with the RPMs at about 1800-1900. Do I let off the gas first, shift down to third, and then get back on it? I just want to clarify how to do it because I can drive a manual trans just fine, I've just never tried it before in an automatic.

Thanks in advance.

I just shift down.

Nothing special to it then? That sounds easy enough.

Yea just give it a little practice.. and itll be second nature. My last Bonneville i drove like a manual transmission. And it held up great. Drove it hard and got rid of it with 260,000 miles and it was drove for another 9 months till it was impounded.

I always pull it down into third when i'm on the freeway and I need to lay the throttle down. If i'm under 35, I pull it into 2nd.

I'll have to give it a try or two tomorrow. Thanks guys.

Agreed! But with a column shift, it can be tricky sometimes. Iv'e accidently dumped mine into 2nd or first a few times. Quite the neck snapper!

I er uh..can't tell you guys... ok I can. Anything under 75mph in my car was pullable. Didn't punch out of 2nd until nearly 90mph. Built the motor to do that and the 3.29'* didn't help on the highway speeds..

Sorry I was thinking 1st. At WOT mine shifts into 3rd just after the needle hits 90.

So 1st up to 40,
2nd up to 90,
3rd ... hits the limiter...
4th ... hits it at lower rpm...

Well, I tried it today when there weren't any other cars around. Just simply pulled it down to third, sped up some, and put it back into Drive. There'* nothing to it. My shifter isn't on the column so I had no problems with pulling it too far.