A lot of work to tap the shifter up less than an inch??? 04.5 will hold any gear - it will only down shift when you drop below 600rmp - from any gear... I can be in 3rd and coast down to a crawl at 600rmp then accelerate and I will be in 3rd... of course it's foolish because the car will be gutless and bog till rmps are up... Personally I think the TCU and flexibility of shifting is best on 04.5 - it won’t up-shift or downshift unless I do it manually. The way it should be.

 

My experience with the 04.5 5AT is different than yours and so far I've had two 04.5s and one 05. I had always read about the 04.5 5AT holding gears, even at very low rpms, however I've never seen that happen in any of my loaners. If I have the tranny in 4 and I go around a turn at 10 mph, the tranny downshifts into 2nd and holds it until you manually shift up. I've never had the tranny hold 4th through a slow turn or a slow roll. It always downshifts to appropiate gear and then holds it until you upshift.

I can hold any gear I wish with my 03. I can place my car into 2nd and bang the limiter all day long if I wish. I hold 3rd at the track and often times bounce off the limiter just as I'm passing the finish line. I've never experienced upshifting in manual mode if I hit the limiter.

To me it does feel like a lot of work to have to be constantly shifting everytime I come to a stop. When I'm driving in town, I often leave my car in 3 or 4 (depending on traffic) which gives me a little engine braking instead of riding the brakes. With an 04.5, you would have to be shifting up to 3 or 4 everytime you come to a stop or slow roll. If I wanted to have to manually shift all the time I would have just bought a manual.

 

With that in mind, are 04.5+ able to do 2nd gear or 3rd gear starts?

 

DaveB - I don’t know why I'm even getting into this, but your post makes no sense... you state that you don’t want to shift gears in manual mode, that if you wanted to shift gears you would have bought a manual... just keep the damn thing in full auto! Manumatic is there for times when you WANT to shift!!! As for holding gears - I question whether the loaners you drove were 04 or 04.5 - It's hard for me to believe some 04.5 cars will do what mine does and others won't... this is my last post on it. By the way – have you noticed how sh!tty this site has gotten? It’s due to the BS that flies around here.

 

i completely agree. if you dont want to shift then keep it fully in "D" then you dont got to worry. The manumatic mode is for people who want to eat corners and play around and have fun or maybe track with the A/T.... dont like it then keep it in drive.

 

I disagree with this. When would holding a gear down to 600 rpm's EVER be beneficial? I can't think of a situation. Next to high heat, bogging is the worst thing for a tranny and motor. My 05 downshifts to appropriate gears way before 600 rpms, but will not upshift until shifted.

That's the way it should work

 

You're not understanding me. I do use manual mode a lot, but rarely do I use to upshift when driving around town unless I'm rapping it out somewhere. Sometimes I'll use MM to downshift when coming up to a corner if I'm feeling frisky. The problem I have with the 04.5+ tranny is you always have to be working the upshifts. When I drive around town, I hit the shifter in MM and it defaults to 4 and holds 4th. With the 04.5+ you can't do this. You're forced to upshift every gear until you reach 4th and then if you're speed drops below an ideal speed, the tranny downshifts accordingly, again forcing you to upshift to 4th eventually. With my 03 I can leave it in 2, 3, 4, 5 and it will perform like an auto and will only shift up to the gear I select. If I want total control then I hit it into 1st and manually shift any gear I want. In the end, you have more control with the 03 tranny than what the 04.5 gives you.

I can most certainly tell you that I've had two 04.5 loaners and one 05X. The 04.5s are dead giveaways because they have the newer and classier shift **** plus the shift gate is much shorter. I even popped the passenger kick plate off to look at the completely different TCU. And yes, the tranny selected 1st when coming to stops and forced me to upshift every gear. Also, I never got one of these cars to hold 3rd or 4th at anything below 1000rpms. When the rpms dropped down below 1100rpms or depending on load, the tranny will manually shift into the appropiate gear.

 

The point isn't why you would hold a gear down to 600 RMP it's that the car will. As oppose to previous poster.

 

You are wrong on two counts... the tranny will NOT drop to a lower gear unless you do it manually - unless you are under 600rmp (on my car), then it will drop to 1st gear no matter what gear you were in. That is the ONLY time it will drop gears on it's own. The second area where you are wrong is you were not looking at an 04.5 TCU unless you took the transmission apart - it is house inside.

 

The 04.5 and 05 I drove will not allow you to cruise away in 2, 3, 4, or 5 at 600rpms. I don't even know how that would be possible because the engine would be under such load that it would detonating all over the place. If you tried to accelerate in 3rd at 600rpms in a 6MT it would buck, detonate, and potentially stall unless you were slipping the hell out of the clutch. I don't see how Nissan would allow the 5AT to operate under such stress. I've tried and tried to get the 04.5s and 05X to do what you're talking about and it NEVER once did it.

As for the TCU on the 04.5 I looked at, I really have no idea what kind of device I was looking at, there is DEFINITELY an electronic box on the 04.5 in the same exact location as the TCU as the 03. The box on the 04.5 is significantly smaller and and doesn't have near the wire bundle coming out of it, but I cn assure you there is a device in the location. Look for yourself. It takes all of 1 minute to access.