my truck at normal operation shifts into overdrive at about 45mph and then just kinda cruises, but if you wanna speed up you gotta kinda mash on it and then it drops like 3 gears and the engine revs way up, but realy all it needs to do it drop out of overdrive. is this normal?

 

One of those "gears" is just the torque converter, and then the other is an actual gear change to 3rd. These trannies only have four gears, so I hope you didn't drop to 1st at 45+ mph.

 

yea i doubt is but i dont know a whole lot about the tranny's it just seems like it shouldnt shift into OD that soon and the truck doesn't seem to have much power in OD to speed up but idunno

 

welcome to ram-ville. my truck does the exact same thing. the tc locks up at about 40 and then it immediately shifts to OD and bogs down. to prevent this, i just always turn OD off unless i'm going about 60+. this keeps the rpm's up above 1600 where it has some torque. below 1500 has no torque.

the excessive shifting is the probably 4 events. downshift from OD to 3rd, and TC unlock, then re-lock, then shifts back into OD. try leaving OD off.

another thing you might need is a new TPS. mine was all screwed up. when i'd get to a hill and press the gas slightly, nothing happened. seemed like a dead spot. i'd mash harder and still nothing. mash harder and then it did all that downshift, upshift, and then bog down again. new tps made it a lot better - a little gas pedal pressure and it'd speed up a little like its supposed to.

 

I think what you get at 45 MPH is the torque converter locking up. If you are gentle on the accelerator it should go into OD around 30MPH. If you are giving it a lot of throttle it peobably dropping down to 2nd.

 

I had the same sort of issue on my '95 1/2t, and found my '01 3/4t doing it, too. I adjusted the bands in the tranny (first time in ~ 120,000mi) and went from having a tranny I thought I needed to replace, to one that worked like I thought it should. If you're kinda mechanically inclined, just google the instructions, I think I used the ones from dodgeram.org, since they had a nice write-up at the time. It's really not that hard, more of a mess than anything.

For the cost of the fluid and filter, and a bit of my time, both of mine were night and day different. I'd give that a try if you haven't already. Downshifts happen with less throttle input, and the gears are held longer. My '95 was really hashed (chunks of plastic garbage in the pan and lot's of "sparkly" crap) and I've put another 60k on it since, although I have adjusted the bands once more. I beat the poo out of that one though. When it's shot, I'll throw it away.

x's 2 on the leaving OD off under 60.