dong888

iTrader: (1)

Here is what I know about tiptronics:

Before 350, I owned Acura TL which is equipped with tiptronics as well but it is a bit dfferent. If you set the gear to 3, the gear will stay at 3, set @ 4, gear will stay at 4. However, each gear will have its own speed range (eg: gear 3 is minimum 35 mph and maximum at whichever speed red line is). If you set gear at 3 and the car stops completely, the gear will automatically shift to gear 1 for you.

For IS350, the tiptronics will only set the maximum gear. That mean if you want 4th gear to be the maximum gear, the car can only go up to 4th gear. When you set at 4, you have no control of the gear 1, 2 or 3. Basically, you are driving a car with 4 speed only (with close ratio of course).

As for me, whenever I drive, I will shift to S and have it set @ 6. It is basically the same as an automatic. BUT if I want to do a sharp turn, I will downshift the gear to 4th or 3rd, depending on the speed.

To me, the is350 tiptronics is not the same as Sequential Manual Gear since AI is still involved in gear setting.

Hopefully this helps...

kensteele

So I drove the CL with the same Acura shifting and I can tell you that the IS method is much better. First of all, you couldn't control the shift from 1-2 in the Acura, this was done automatically and you had no choice, the only way to hold it in 1st was to move the shifter all the way down to the 1 slot. Not a big deal for me, but a lot of people didn't like that. It's sad that I'm forgetting already it's only been since November but I believe you had to downshift the Acura, otherwise at the stop light, you could take off in 2nd and maybe even 3rd.

On the Lexus IS, the purpose of the double shift or multiple upshift is if you know you are going to speed up to let say 85mph from going really slow, why rev up in 2nd, then rev up in 3rd, then rev up in 4th trying to shift optimally in each when you can go tap tap tap then hold the accelerator and it will go on it's own....right up to where you tell it to stop; touching on redline perfectly each time?

I'm not good but I'm working on it, using the manual shifting, but when I try to shift thru the gears upshift on every single gear, sometimes I hit the limiter and it's annoying. Should have just moved it straight to the gear I wanted and let the car rev right up to redline and shift on it's own, just like in auto, but better....because auto often takes you into a higher gear than you want.

Payam

Exactly. If you select 4th as the max gear and floor it, it will redline 1-4 and hold at 4. If you select 4th as the max gear and gently press the gas, it will shift around 4k and once again, hold at 4th gear. Also, if you downshift to lets say 2nd gear from 4th doing 40mph, it will shift down to 2nd gear with the revs up waiting for you to either slow down or select a higher gear it can go to.

ES3

Yes, but by being in manual mode you can determine how many gears the engine will redline up through... if you're in auto and you floor it, it'll redline to 6th gear (if you actually had enough road/track to go that long) But in the manual mode, it'll redline up ONLY to the gear you have showing, I.E, 3rd or 4th. Follow?