AT transmission hard shifting issues
 

I just got this car less than two weeks. I have about 900 on the odo. I've been searching different threads, couldn't find an exact answer.

I love the manual mode in the car. I have been having one issue. Most of the time the car upshifts so smoothly.

But once and while the car will kick back (jerk) when shifting into 2nd or 3rd. When shifting I usually keep my foot on the pedal the entire time. It will stay like this during the entire drive. It's less noticeable if i take my foot off the gas during the shift.

And when I turn off the car it will return back to normal. Shifts like butter. I'm worried this could become a problem later.

Is the car warm when you're driving it?

always.. It shifts like butter when i usually start it cold. Then if i stop or after a while driving the hard shifting starts up.

That's odd. When the car is cold, I have aggressive and hard shifts from 1-2. When it's warm the car is always smooth (except in sport mode).

Does your car whine when you accelerate at low RPMS?

I have the same issue on my FRS. It seems to happen most when I shift into manual mode after driving hard, or after traffic. If I leave it in manual mode from the start its fine.

it happens to me once or twice after a very very spirited blast in manual mode, when i put it back into auto

I had the same issue, it's been gone for a while. Never pinned it down. If you let off while shifting, it won't buck but if your foot is on the pedal hard it feels very shitty when it shifts.

It's not temperature or load, as I've experienced it a bunch of times in entirely different conditions. I usually pull over, turn the car off, wait a minute or two, and start up again. that usually fixes it.

But for two solid hours of tracking with no upgraded radiator or oil cooler, I had zero issues the whole time. I can't figure out what the prob is haha.

My car did it early on (low mileage) but I'm at about 4k miles now and I haven't had that issue for a while.

Maybe the transmission or ECU sorts its own shit out after a bit?

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I will say I also have the same problem with my AT.

+1

Most AT issues will come down to the fluid. The tolerance for fluid level in this car is extremely tight. And if it's out of its operating range the volume will change. If the fluid level isn't right it becomes harder to shift.

Manual & sport modes are supposed to have aggressive shifts, the only time I hear something from mine is from 5th to 4th I hear a small clunk which is only because of my hollow tail shaft amplifying the noise.

It shouldn't sound like there's something wrong with if though. If it sounds sick, it is.

The main issue seems to be jerky shifts. It still shifts, but it feels odd. Does anyone know if changing the fluid help at all? I've had this problem since a little after 1000 mi.

Ok, so as @fatalelement elluded to: is it safer to lift while shifting in M or not? having your foot at > 50% throttle makes awesome shifts but when it's cold you get a rough shift

With a torque converter it shouldn't make a difference if you lift or not I would think. Once it starts acting up, it does not seem to matter what position the throttle is in

For example today, it actually happened during my drive. It was smooth as butter , then during my drive it started to shift roughly again. But then yesterday it was smooth as butter all day.

For me, if I really lifted off the throttle, it wouldn't shift roughly. But it wasn't easing off really, I had to drop the throttle mostly for the shift. Then it wasn't rough.

For the record, past 1st gear the torque converter is COMPLETELY locked to the transmission and the transmission is entirely rigid.

believe a few members said its the AT transmission fluid but i havent changed mine since i rarely use that mode anyway, but mine seem to come when shifting from 1 to 2 under 3500 RPM

+1 here. I generally have only noticed the hard shifting while at a high RPM but then again that's about the only time I'm using manual mode lol

I find that when the car is cold, say first thing the morning, transmission feels notchy, not as fluid shifting compared to warm.

I haven't changed my transmission fluid and I'm at 10,000 miles. Oil changes help a little and rear differential change I noticed improves quite a bit to smoother shifting.

A/T Hard shift 2015 FR-s
 

Hi gentelman. I have exactly the same shift issues as you guys. First started @ 500mi. now i'm at 6500mi. I've been to the dealership more than a dozen times over the last 6mo. Both the ecu & trans control unit were replaced but i'm still having the same issues. I've been dealing w/corporate for about 5mo now and their conclusion... this is a charateristic of these vehicles and there is no fix at this time. I do have dashcam vid of 2 corporate techs who were able to duplicate the issue with what he stated in his report as a premature down shift, WRONG! The 2 techs tried again after cycling the key and beat the crap out of it for about another hour with no avail. Is this a charateristic we would willingly pay for? Any ideas? Thanks, Da Zob

I have a different FRS now, and same issue. It may just be the fluid characteristics, as has been said before. But I do remember that when they designed the AT they said they didn't want to shy from giving the driver "a shock," so...

I believe this is only true in Sport mode and it makes a huge difference in how the car feels and shifts. Some roughness is probably the price one pays for the locked convertor.

Hard shifts means less clutch/clutch plate wear. faster shifts but no comfort.

I wonder if the line pressure is increased as well.


Just be sure that hard shifts are not confused with a Shift bang, or a flared shift. those would indicate problems.



OP with such little miles on your car don't worry about it, wait till theres at least an oil change worth of miles before over thinking problems.

Just let the dealer try it or Gopro your dash so we can see the shift points and such.

Anybody ever figure this out? I'm currently dealing with the issue through Toyota. See here:


http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93562

I've had this issue a few times and after shutting the car and restarting it would always go away. For the last 2 months I stopped using cruise control and it's never happened again. I realized that it always happened after I exited the highway and I put it in manual after using cruise control. Today I used cruise and decided to see what happens and sure enough it returned. On the way home after putting cruise back on when I reached the exit I turned off the cruise using the button and when I put it in manual all was fine. See if you get the same results as I did.

It happens for me when I go back and forth from manual and drive on the highway or spirited drives. If I start and leave it in M it does not happen. Always when it shifts hard, I'll have the idle hunt issue in park.

BUT, there is a TSB from September to fix the idle hunt issue, a reflash of the TCM. So I wonder if a fix is within the reflash since it accompanies the hard shifts.

Hey guys, check out my more recent thread here:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93562


Toyota is having engineers analyze the data from my hard shifting this week after they drove it all last week and replicated the problem multiple times. They are confident they'll have a fix soon.

This service bulletin was also just released that could be related:

http://www.ft86club.com/forums/attac...1&d=1443640063

That service bulletin I took off tech stream for everyone with our problem to attempt to get done which seems the most promising because it is of course TCM related.

Agreed. My dealership tried it on my TCM but kept getting "Bad Gateway" errors so will try again another time.

This has come back hard for me and I'm getting really tired of it. I'm fine with keeping it in manual mode forever, but after a year of it, if the easiest fix is to start in M and not use cruise control, etc., I might as well have saved a bunch of money and bellyaching over this and just bought a manual or used s2k.

Going to the dealer this weekend to harass them over this. Quickly the honeymoon period is ending for me with this stupid transmission.

My dealership has basically told me to fuck off with this. They'll only look at it if the car is entirely stock as well. Maybe over the winter.

I'm in the same boat as you, though I bought the car when my situation was different than it is now, but I just wish I had have gone with a manual from the start. Oh well, not much I can do, except for be at the mercy of Toyota for now.

I'm literally taking everything non cosmetic right off my car before I go in. If they tell me to fuck off I'm probably going to sell the car. Just paid it off and I'm having visions of a shitty 4 or 5 years before resale tanks and I'm really not interested in that future.

I'd probably take it to another dealership to sell bc I'm sure if I harass them about this the last thing they want is the next owner coming back.

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A quick update in case you probably didn't see the other post- after taking a video of the issue for my dealer, on my way home a truck backed into my front end while I was at a red light so it's gonna be at the shop until the end of the month at least. Hood's toast, bumper gone, maybe fenders. So until I have it back nothing's going anywhere near the dealer :( but when I do get it there I'll post here again.

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I'm starting to feel this now, I keep it in manual mode nearly 100% of the time now and realize no one else drives the car other than me contrary to what I originally though when I bought it. It's making it slightly regrettable getting the auto

That was me. After about a year of 100% manual mode I finally have enough early morning stop and go where I want to drink a coffee and relax in D and I realized that this predictably happens now.

Super peeved. If I'm gonna be in manual mode 100% of the time I might as well be much faster at the expense of pushing my left foot down sometimes.

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Yea it's predictable now for alot of us, I'm gonna make a poll thread and gauge how widespread this issue is, alot of people are complaining about it but nothing is happening. My logic is I don't mind the auto if it works correctly all the time as it should, but if it screws up like it does now it isn't enjoyable at all

Thanks for doing this - my dealer seems (?) reasonable so the more I can furnish them at the end of the month when I have my car back (assuming it's not totaled) the better.

If anything comes of it, I'll post all the details here. My father was a pretty successful attorney in the US and I do patent litigation, so neither of us are interested in being taken for a ride by the dealership so one way or another it's either getting fixed or given a pretty good trade in lol. We are both reasonable until we need to be highly obnoxious ;)

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Good to know, in the past there were issues when the car came out and Toyota was super receptible to widespread issues and released TSBs immediately. This has been an issue with people for some time and there hasn't been any fix only because dealers seem to like saying its "normal" or "not repeatable" even though a tech says that's not right. Hopefully, they take care of it, I have a TCM sitting in my basement from a 2013 FR-S I would totally swap that in when I get time but I wanna see what the current TSB does.

My dealership is still waiting to hear back from Toyota about the data logging they sent them, but both the dealership and the local Toyota rep were able to repeat this issue and they all agree that it's a problem and they're doing a good job of documenting it. Hopefully we'll have an answer to this soon. They also had trouble flashing my TCM so I have no idea if the new TSB fixes this or not.

Damn, first oil change for me is during thanksgiving I'll bring it up then and try and make them flash the new TCM logic and see if it's reproducible after that.