SkeeterBo

I bought my 2004 LS in May with 106,000 in it. Beautiful, one owner car. Well maintained. I have one issue with the transmission. I park in a huge 8 story parking structure for work. I will park as high as I need to in order to park away from everybody. When I leave and I'm going down to the bottom floor, my transmission just loves to kick down into first gear when i give it a little gas. That's really annoying. I doesn't do it when I'm going up the parking structure. Shouldn't it just stay in second or third gear? I'm only going 15 mph at the most. It shouldn't kick into first at 15 mph, right?

​​​​​​​Thank you.

fensterlip

There's another post that talks about the transmission"helping" with a downshift when going downhill and touching the brakes or giving gas to help with vehicle control. I'm not sure if this can be "Techstream" programmed out. Maybe someone can try and look for a turning off of this feature.

toddmorr

this is working as designed. Kind of doubt it can be programmed out via Techstream but i'll look next time i'm in there. I've had several Toyota products and they all do it, with varying degrees of aggressiveness. Not sure of the reasoning behind Toyota's thinking on this.....maybe it's a brake pad preservation tactic, since it only seems to kick in once you've tapped the brakes

tallcaguy

I think most of the people in here park as far away as possible from other cars. Can use the manual shift option to control gear choice.

SkeeterBo

I've got no problem with it when I'm going downhill at a decent rate of speed. There's no way this should be happening at 15 mph. It's too jerky at that speed. My Honda Element doesn't do it and I doubt if a $63,000 Lexus should be doing it.

lextout

some 2004 430's had tranny issues and there was a recall on that.

tallcaguy

Was the 04 tranny problem jerky shifts at low rpm's and hunting for gears?

SkeeterBo

tallcaguy, very similar to that. It'll shift thru the first three gears once it slams back to first. And, like I said, only when I'm going down a slight hill at very lows speeds....10-15 mph.

texan_176

iTrader: (5)

Very interesting. My 05 will not kick down like that at all. I go down a very sharp incline at one garage I park in once in a while. The car will just accelerate and keep shifting into higher gears. I just put it in the manual mode and hold 1st gear.

My transmission has an unrelated issue where when getting on a freeway with maybe 20-30% open throttle it will kick down 1 or 2 gears between 50-60 mph. If feels like a turbo kicked in but is really annoying. You have to baby the throttle to not do that.

Lavrishevo

iTrader: (1)

The transmission recall had nothing to do with shifting. Some very early 04's had parking pawl's that could fail when parked on a hill without the parking brake.

There was a software update that improved low speed shifting on certain models. It would be worth validating your computer has the most up to date software. This has the be done at a Toyota or Lexus dealer.

tallcaguy

I've seen Techstream mentioned several times. Does this allow access to the car's computer? My indie checked my car for shift updates and said it hadn't been done. My 04 shifted fine but I had him do the update anyway. No difference that I could tell. The 2 drain/flushes did make shifting closer to "Lexus perfect"

Scootymad

My 00 LS does this as well, mine is due to the shifter linkage being out of adjustment and the selector not being quite seated into D correctly (i.e. in my case too far down). It will also not engage reverse quickly enough if reverse isn't in the correct position either.

Lavrishevo

iTrader: (1)

Techstream only allows you to configure the various options that are on the vehicle. It's main purpose is to test and diagnose problems. Like alarm, light sensor, keyless, smart key, etc. nothing with the engine. Unless your independent shops pays for the subscription to Toyota server you can't update the ECU. Most do not. I personally would only trust a dealer to update the ecu. If you mess it up you can destroy the computer very easily.

jrmckinley

Known issue on '04's (I have one). Computer software upgrade should fix it. I've gotten used to it on my car after 8 1/2 years of driving so it doesn't bother me as much (I live in a gated neighborhood which has a downhill entrance- so it happens almost all of the time). I just traded private messages with another member of the forum who did the SW upgrade- said it was $300 at Lexus.

SkeeterBo

Thanks for all of the replies. jrmckinley, I will swing by the Lexus dealer and have them do what they do. I will let everyone know how it goes.

​​​​​​​Thank you so much.