ok so i know by posting this i realise im goin to get a few ppl saying i shouldve bought manual but i couldnt ok so now were past that...i have an 04 mazda 3 with tip tranny and i got the upshifting down fine but when it comes to slowing down or stopping what do i do? do i downshift? at what point do i do this? i mean if i downshift it throws me a bit...general advice is needed here

 

I'm almost positive that they haven't changed tiptronic, and when I was renting a 2008 Mazda3 with Tiptronic, before buying my Manual 3, it automatically downshifted as I slowed down.

I personally didnt downshift because like you said, its jerky if you do it too soon.

 

I only downshift mine to 3rd (Sport 5 Speed) but will go into 2nd as I am getting back on the throttle [8D]

 

I don't think you'd really want to in normal driving. Letting it do its thing will get you much better gas mileage. I only use it when I'm in a real hurry, in a hard corner, or emergency braking. You have to practice and watch your speeds as you try it out.

 

The car will automaticallydownshift as you slow down, otherwise the car would stall. The car will not allow you to downshift if the lower gear will be too high in the RPM range. The gearindicator will blink.If you look in the manual it will tell you the min's and max's of when to upshift or downshift. Downshifting does make the car jerk if you are off the gas. If you downshift while your foot is still on the gas, the shift will be a lot smoother. It feels like how the car would downshift if you were in auto mode.

some other info about the tiptronic:

If you are in a higher gear and you press the gas down either to gun it or your foot is pressing the gas hard, the car will downshift. The car willNEVER upshift, even if you are past redline.I forgot a few times that the car was in maual, and had the music loud, and i would forget to upshift. When you are slowing down and you get to a low speed but not a complete stop, the car stays in either3rd or 2nd and when you give it gas you have a slow, stubborn start. If you are braking i found that the smoothest downshifts, when not applying the gas,are at the lowRPM's at low speeds.

 

thanks alot guys for the good responses i get how to do it now

 

yeah, i was gonna post a thread about this same thing. i learned a lot from reading up. the whole thing about letting it do its own thing and better gas milage. is that true? i have kinda noticed that when im in manual trans i tend to get let gas milage. but whenever im in manual i drive heavyfooted too, so i assumed that was the issue. manual has something on me. im a lil speed demon when i switch over to tiptronic. haha.

 

I know exactly what you mean. For the pat two weeks i've been driving in automatic, after driving it just inmanual modeforfew months,and i can definitely see a difference in my driving habits, along with better mileage. I also thought i was getting better mileage because i wasn't driving as quickly. I think you should get around the same mpg in both modes, because if you drive it in manual and shift when the auto normally would, which is around 3000rpm, it'd be like the car was in auto.

 

ok glad im not the only guy that does this, I swear its not just the switch in the tranny, as soon as i hit the manual side, i deff start to drive more aggressive, but i am a Honda convert. my civic was a five speed, so i tend to rev the uknow what outta this one... but all is good, OH just thought of something anyone put on a tranny cooler ??? do you think it would help the trans? keep the fluid cooler? I had one back in the day but that was also on a V 8 motor that i pretty muched raced, thanks laters[8D]

 

I downshift the tiptronic if I have to slow down - eg. if I'm going 60 mph in top gear, but then need to slow down to 40mph due to traffic, I will pop it down a gear.

The tiptronic will on its own shift down to first gear if you stop completely, but for speed ups and slow downs where there is no complete stop involved, the tip will not go up and down on its own. Anybody who says otherwise is WRONG. If you think about this, it makes perfect sense, doesn't it? In what way would it be a tiptronic if it shifted gears without your prompting (when your in sport shift mode)? Exception is, the tranny willshiftup on its own to prevent you fromwrecking your engine, or if you try to shift down when going at a very high speed (ie. it will not let you shift down to 1st gear when going 50 mph, because that would potentially wreck you engine).

Pop the gears up and down as you would if driving an old-school-with-clutch manual. If you were not supposed to do this, there would not be both a + and a - built into the gear shift console.