I have a 2005 "high output" 4.7L that works great as long as you stay out of overdrive or are on level roads. Once there, the transmission doesn't like to downshift and when it does, drops into the lower of the second gears (passing gear) and overshoots especially when using the cruise control. Has anybody else had this issue? We have a lot of hills in the area and it gets to be a real pain having to fight the gas pedal to maintain a constant speed. Having to burn premium gas and then use passing gear to get up some of the hills is this area is not fun. I've added a cold air intsake and a superchip which helped with low-end torque but there is nothing left in 5th gear.

 

where did you get the superchips from. they dont make a programmer for our trucks. jet chip is the only maker for our trucks. if you went with an 04 superchip you might hve corrupted the software thats in the pcm. but if you have the jet chip you would be ok. i have a regular 05 4.7 cc that has no problems in cruise. it will maintain speeds even going up hills. i know some people have has bad tranny luck with theres. graything had a 4.7 ho and he had to lemon law it because it was so bad. ask him directly about your troubles.

 

I have an 06 HO. It doesn't downshift unless it's a decent uphill stretch & the cruise is set fairly high. I agree it is annoying though when the trans downshifts because it ignores 4th gear & goes right to 3rd[:@] I recently put on gibson exhaust & aem intake, it doesn't downshift nearly as much as it used to at least. I think it did recommend in the owners manual not to use cruise when it's hilly[>:]

 

Sorry, got my vehicles crossed. The Dakota has the Jet Stage 1 chip. I thought about adding custom exhaust but I don't want a lot of extra cabin noise. I'll also agree that you shouldn't use cruise in hills but it ain't much better doing it manually. If I start up a hill (the more over 60 the worse it is) you have to take the pedal all the way to the floor and will still lose speed. The trans will finally downshift hard and the you have to back off to keep from overshooting. It's a continual battle trying to maintain speed. I've had it into Dodge 3 times and they keep telling me that's the way it's supposed to work. I had a 2001 Dakota with a 4.7 4 speed auto and it would run circles around this one on regular gas.

 

mine does that too I guess but definitely not as badly as yours-? If I mess with the pedal just right I can get it to just shift to 4th & it'll maintain speed unless the hill is steep and/or I'm speeding[&:] I think the trans needs a smarter computer so it'll only shift to 4th instead of straight to 3rd. Could the chip have made it worse? I think you'd be happy with the gibson 3". Barely louder cruising around, not even noticable on the highway. It & the intake did seem to help a little bit HTH

 

The chip and cold air intake acutally helped and I can now make it up some of the hills without having to downshift like it used to do. I'll check out the Gibson as I would like to have dual exhaust. I've talked with my localDodge service manager and we're going on a road test sowe'll see how that goes.

 

Why are you in OD on hills, turn it off on hilly roads and the truck will just ride in 4th and not downshift nearly as much. 5th grear is a gas saving gear only, it's pointless on hills.

 

Oh ya I forgot to mention that, if you push the button for the towing mode it doesn't shift as much but it seems like it screams more than it should need to for allegedly having 260 hp, even more with intake & exhaust[sm=rolleyes.gif]

 

Makes no difference if I'm in OD or tow mode. The truck will not downshift until the pedal is on the floor and the speed has dropped at least 5 MPH. It'll then downshift and you have to watch the speed closely or you're way over the limit. The cruise control reacts so slowly that the pedal will still be backing off even though the truck is steadily accelerating. If you happen to catch the top of the hill when it downshifts, you could easily be doing 10 to 15 MPH faster than setpoint before the cruise backs off enough so you are no longer adding gas. Put the non-responsive tranny and the slow cruise control together and I had better watch out for the state troopers.

 

ya it's very annoying not being able to use cruise on very long or steep grades.[:@]Even going back down the hill I'll leave the cruise off a lot of times because it downshifts to keep the speed down. I've never seen a rig do that so willingly.[:'(] Pushing the tow button should still help you it seems like. Sounds like your cruise might react even slower than mine, & that's bad![:-]