I didn't want to put the dreaded "Flare" word in the subject line, since it provokes fear in the hearts of even the strongest men. But my LS460 does the same thing my IS350 did, and that is that it hangs on to gears too long after romping on the throttle a little.

To put it another way, if I have to get on it - especially in the lower gears - say, to get ahead of a couple of cars for an upcoming turn or something, the transmission doesn't want to go ahead and upshift for a couple of seconds after I let off the gas. It just keeps the engine revs up, then finally settles down.

In the IS and ES forums, people were referring to that as transmission flaring, and I know there was a lot of complaining about it and even a buyback of some cars by Lexus.

So ... does everyone's LS do this? It's not something I can't live with ... it's just unusual, and I wonder if it's considered "normal"?

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I can assure you that what you described is not what ES owners experience, the slipping of an ES, aka flare, is it not going into the next gear and instead slipping with RPM racing and then finally catching, sometimes slamming and jerking into the next gear.

If your LS was doing what an ES does this would be your facial expression right after... particularly if it was slipping from 2 into 3 and you had just pulled out into traffic

Your situation sounds like it is at least still in a gear though as if there is a limiter on it.

 

Do you have the ECT switch in the "PWR" position?

 

LOL. Nope, no slipping and slamming.

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Nope - haven't even used the PWR setting yet. The switch is right in the middle position between PWR and Snow.

When I had my IS350, I tried the PWR setting and found it just exacerbated the "shift lag" I'm describing. When I asked about it (on the IS), I was of course told by the dealer that "that's just the way they do" (as if I'd never owned an automatic transmission in my 40+ years of driving, and didn't know how they worked. Duh.).

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I had something strange happen the other day w/ my transmission as well. I was at a dead stop at a signal. I then stepped on the gas to go and the car hesitated and then jerked into forward motion. I thought, "what the hell". Hasn't done it again since.

 

Mike....you have an '07 or '08?

 

I had this happen as well. Has not happened since though.

 

mike, yes that's normal. basically the ecu thinks you are in aggressive mode so it tries to stay in lower gear in case you need them. if you get on the gas again but now very mildly? it will upshifts right the way. tested it many times already

the jerking feel, that's the tranny "feature" where at stop it puts the car in neutral, so when you go from stop it has to shift from N to D (tranny itself) but if you gas it fast, you get the jerking feel. there is a TSIB for it to reprogram the tranny so it doesn't go into N. i did it, much much better response. technically it lowers your mpg, but i never noticed any

 

Right, that's what they told me with the IS. But I've never owned another automatic transmission car that did that, so it seems abnormal to me. And some of the cars I've owned over the years were fairly "hot" cars, too, so I have to conclude this is just Lexus's idea of aggressive and no one else agrees.

Oh, and clemgrad - mine's an '08.

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I mentioned this phenomena in an earlier post. Apparently this is "normal" with Lexus. Never happened with Acura, although other worse problems happened there. I've adjusted my driving habits to compensate for this "initially annoying" feature. And since I anticipate it, I let it go when it happens allowing the tranny to catch up. Other than that, it is a fluid smooth piece of machinery.

 

I have the same thing you are describing and was told that it's normal. When and if it bothers me, I switch to S mode and up-shift manually.