Hey guys,

I bought a new 2011 Durango V6 and I love this SUV! It's awesome. However, I've noticed that the transmission is a real dog. The car has plenty of pep and shifts fine, if you're on a flat surface. If you intend on going up a hill, the transmission seems like it becomes confused and cannot figure out what gear to be in. Upon reaching an incline, I practically have to mash the gas pedal down in order for it to down shift. It seems to down shift fine, but then immediately shifts back into a higher gear. This routine occurs over and over again while going up any hill for a long period of time. Out of frustration, I started using the tip-tronic to down shift when needed. When I am cruising around 40-50 mph going up hill, the car tends to stay in 4th gear, so naturally when I need to down shift to 3rd, I hit the shifter down but it shifts all the way down to 2nd! While going 50 MPH, 2nd gear is obviously too low of a gear to be in. It completely skips 3rd.

Is anyone else having this issue?

 

Just had a road trip last Saturday to Idaho and didn't experience the gear hunting issue you have when going up on a hill although I have the 5.7 hemi not sure if the V6 matches well with the 5 spd tranny. In the freeway I mostly stayed in cruise control mode only taking it off when going uphill and like I said there was no gear hunting that I noticed and my average speed is between 70 - 80 mph.

 

Yeah, the 5.7 has a completely different transmission. The V6 is mated to the Mercedes transmission... I think it's the same one in the ML series SUV.