Hi all,

I am new here, so firstly nice to meet you all.

I have a half-year old Camry 2007 V6. I read the manual and it doesn't tell me the RPM's to shift for the gears in Sportmatic mode.

I am not a car-knowledgy person, so my friend tells me that to use sportmatic without over-wearing on my engine, I need to find the RPM boundaries to upshift/downshift.

But where do I get these? Or is this not needed, b/c a sportmatic will shift you when you get too low / too high?

Also, why does my sportmatic always start in gear 4? I thought that at low speed gear 1 is better, so if I start from 0 speed, shouldn't it be in gear 1?


Thanks alot,
J

 

It'll automatically shift if it goes too high into redline or won't let you shift if it'll put you too high into the rpms. I'm not sure of the exact shift points. However, keeping it in auto mode from a stop is faster than using the manumatic. The manumatic comes in handy when from a role or cornering. I find the lag between 3-4 takes way too long to shift manually. Auto does a much better job. Too bad they didn't release the V6 with a stick.

 

I would second Virus on that. The 6 speed autos do have the i-shift feature that allows the tranmission to adapt to your driving style and eventually reprogram some of the shift points for optimal engine and transmission performance. I have found the Sportmatic mode to be rather sluggish with its own preprogrammed shift ponts on my SE V6, so shifting by hand isn't much fun anyway.

 

Sportmatic mode is designed for basically what it says..Sports Matic transmission. Or also knows as auto manual slap shift ect. Its really only there for drivers appeal. Its there for the driver who wants to be cool and shift his cars gears or thinks hes jeff gordon on a street course. However it does have its ups it also has it downs. Manual shifting a transmission wont shift to the cars best abilities. Then agian you might not want it to shift so much.

How it works. Theres many purposes. Such as using it for hills mountains rain snow ect. A good example is hill or mountains. The transmission will automatically shift for the best fuel economy it can get. However In mountain terrains it can shift to much making the transmission work to much and put more of a load on your brakes. If you have it in sportmatic mode andkeep it in a low gear persay in mountain hill areas it will use less brake force to slow down because the engine will naturally be down shifting. Less strain on the transmisson and not to mention better torque for those inclines.
Downfalls.
Im not sure how this transmission works exactly but when in sport matic mode it may not upshift a gear if you forget. Resulting in high rpm revs and rough shifts due to driver error. I believe it will automatically downshift back down to 1st gear for you if your stoppedor select the next lowest gear to put you in without you having to do so while your moving. It could also only downshift into 1st once stop leaving you to select the best gear to continue in after slowing down. Leaving you stranded in high gear with no revs. Maybe im wrong there. It should start you off in 1st from a stop.

All in all the owners manual will better explain it better than i could or anyone else probably. However the best rpm band to shift under normal accleration can be easily figured out. Just watch the transmission in automatic drive mode. See the shift points for each gear or close to it. There fun to use on the interstate but around town it could do more harm than good in the long run. Specially if it doesnt upshift the next gear if you forget to. Which i found to be a common problem being it doesnt have a clutch so you easily forget to shift it or have forgotten its in sport matic mode.

 

gotta go fast like a nascar right?

sportmatic exists in newer cars in place of the older 3,2,1 or 2,L shifts. Thats what i believe they are there for. So if you climb mountains it helps the car not gear hunt as much.

or if you decided to track the camry, you could keep it in optimal rpm range to give you the most power. but like other say its kind of fool proof in that it'll shift for you automatically if u dont shift.

Keeping any car in high rpm's for extended periods of time without using high end fluids will definately cause premature wear of parts and the fluid. therefore if you use manumatic for fun, try never to shift after 4000 rpms.