I’ve driven a zf8speed for a while and it’s pretty great, more fun to shift a bunch with the shorter ratios it makes you feel like the car is actually fast. But I work Amazon and these ford transits have a 10speed.
My issues are:
1)it always over up shifts. It never uses second gear ever. It will always go to 3rd and you’ll be in fking 4th by 12mph. So I find that it has to constantly down and upshift when I need the slightest bit of power which coming from driving manuals just feels bad. Like bro stop working so hard just wait to shift till 2.5k rpm. Im always hitting the gas then if I have to let off for one second even on a big uphill it will just upshift to like 6th or seventh. And then all the way back to 3rd one second later when I need to power up the hill again.
- this is the biggest issue imo, the final gear ratio doesn’t even reduce rpm comparitevely to my 8speed at say 80mph the revs are almost the same. Bro if your gonna add two gears make it the same ratio as the 8 with two extra so I’m at like 1k rpm on the highway. Why bother with the 10 speed if I’m still gonna be at 2.5k rpm at 80mph.
Ok random rant over, this is what happens when you drive on vehicle too often for an annoying job. You start really nitpicking everything that gets slightly on your nerves lol
You must log in or register to comment.
Had a 2015 Evoque for a while that had the ZF-9HP. It too always started off in 2nd, leaving you 8 highway gears. 1st was only used when you went into one of the offroad modes or manually shifted it. It worked well except I hated the 4-5 shift in that transmission because it used a dog clutch and was always very rough and also had an odd ratio.
IIRC about the same time Jeep had used that same transmission in one of their small crossover chassis but it also had a taller gear in the differentials and it always started in 1st, but because the engine didn’t have enough power to spin the final ratio once it went into 9th gear it would cause something to go wrong (I forget exactly what, maybe stall the engine on the highway?), so they had thousands of them sitting on lots waiting for a software update that would permanently lock them out of ever using 9th gear.
10 speeds improve engine life and MPG. They are not meant to improve acceleration.
My 2022 F150 10 speed is garbage
Has Ford ever been satisfying to drive for you?
Counterpoint the 10 speed in my half ton truck is the smoothest shifting transmission I’ve ever had. There is always a right gear for the power Band and the shifts are not jarring even under wide open throttle. I might even say they’re hardly noticeable.
And here I am still driving 4 speeds
How do feel about Powerglides?
Same shit the Powerstoke and Duramax do with their 10 speeds.
Laughs in 4 speed
It really depends on the particular transmission and more importantly the tuning.
I like Honda’s 10-speed automatic in the previous generation Accord 2.0t, but don’t like it in the Acura RDX. It shifts more logically in the Accord.
I don’t like Ford’s tuning of the 10-speed they co-developed with GM. It slams into gears so hard that I half expect the transmission to eject onto the road-particularly in the Mustang GT. But it’s a wonderful transmission when bolted into the Chevy Silverado 2500.
It’s amazing what tuning and software can do to the same transmission. But I have to say, my favorite transmission ever is the ZF 8-speed automatic in my Dodge Charger. It always seems to be in the right gear and is so smooth. Shifts are quick too.
8, 9 and 10 are all overdrive gears, so the experience of an 8-speed vs. a 10-speed really isn’t going to be different under acceleration, around town, spirited driving, etc. the Ford unit has its (well-documented) issues but I really don’t think “too many gears” is one of them. Unless I’m manually downshifting for a long hill or something it’s not like I know or care which gear the transmission is in at any given moment anyway.
I drive a 10 speed, and its geared to reach top speed in 7th. The rest are overdrive gears for reduced cruising consumption and apart from occassionally hunting for gears, i feel its a good compromise to allow the car to pass homologation with a big NA V8
A transmission computer can really make or break an otherwise great transmission, my Benz 5spd was way less responsive than my Honda 5spd for example. TCU tuning oft overlooked
The issue isn’t 10 gears. The issue is shit programming. You could make a 100 gear transmission glorious with the right programming. Or it could be an absolute shit pile.
Yep, the biggest issue with automatic transmissions of any number of gears is the shift logic.
What people want and expect the gas pedal and transmission to do are at odds with what the powertrain engineers have to program the thing to do to game the fuel economy tests.
Some of the best shifting transmissions I’ve experienced were 4 and 6 speeds, some of the worst I’ve experienced were 4 and 6 speeds. We’ve got an 8 speed in my wife’s car and it is ok but could be great if it had a sport mode - I’ve driven other 8 speeds that fought you at every turn.
There’s no reason a 10 speed can’t be good too but the logic of shift logic that says upshift as quickly and highly as you can and hold the highest gear you can for as long as you can and ignore requests to downshift for as long as possible get in the way of enjoyable driving and as long as fuel economy (and emissions) are the biggest factor in transmission shift programs, that’s they way it will remain.
On the other hand, I think 10 speeds is well into diminishing returns in practical use in normal cars. 4 gears with well chosen spacing, well chosen torque converter looseness and a lockup TC clutch can provide a perfectly adequate driving experience (if not ideal for economy) and 6 or 8 should really be more than enough when we’ve got engines with fat, wide and flat torque curves thanks to optimized airflow, fuel injection, VVT, direct injection, etc. We really needed these multigear transmissions back when engines had narrow torque and HP peaks and it was hard work staying in them.
The ford 10 speed is hit or miss with tuning. My 19 5.0 F-150 wasn’t great but my 22 2.7 f-150 is smooth as butter even after 90k. They have it figured out the last couple years I think.
Go electric. Always in the right gear. Ford makes the e-Transit.