Originally posted by cwa107
Ummm.... putting your foot all the way down in D4 is going to automaticly shift the car into the next lowest gear the engine can handle without redlining - which is almost exactly what you're doing when you force it into D3 except the tranny can do it a hell of a lot quicker than your right hand can. Maybe I'm being obtuse here, but like I said, the other "gears" just limit what the top gear is the tranny will shift into. So in D3, the tranny should act exactly as it would in D4, only it won't ever shift into O/D. Like wise, D2 will either allow the tranny to shift into D1 or D2, but never above. So, slapping the shifter into D3 is no different than putting the pedal to metal - unless of course something is already wrong with the shift logic in your tranny.
Id rather pop it down into D3 and give it a moderate amount of gas to pass someone on the highway than to have to completely mash the pedal to the floorboard in order to get the tranny to downshift and finally pass someone. Either way the tranny is downshifting, what does it matter how it does it? Personally I dont see how changing the gear yourself and giving it a moderate to full amount of throttle is more stressful on the transaxle than flooring the pedal down to the floorboard and having it shift that way. The pedal effort and smoothness of shifting is immensely different in both cases. Have you driven the automatic Accord, because it takes much longer to floor the pedal and wait for the tranny to abruptly shift gears than it does to do it yourself with a flick of the wrist.