Towing up grades with "M" and 1 gears

mr_andyj wrote:

Gdetrailer wrote:

Your pretty much dead wrong and obviously have not used a vehicle with TOW/HAUL feature.

Good for you.

No, nothing I said is wrong. All is correct for towing. Tow features on vehicles might differ, but the principal of shifting to a lower gear will not deviate. I have not driven your particular vehicle, but I imagine that it also shifts to a lower gear to engine brake, just as every other vehicle works.

What I left out is considerations on gearing and torque converters. That is a lot to get in to and will depend on the specifics of each individual vehicle trans.

It is very important to understand the engine and transmission and what it is doing or trying to accomplish when towing, especially when towing heavy. Just knowing to "press this certain button" is a foolish way to go about it.

Gearing, engine, transmission "considerations" HAVE already been taken in to account by the manufacturer of each said vehicle.

This forum continues to spout off all of the OLD SCHOOL methodology that one MUST manually intervene ALL THE TIME. That intervention typically is manually changing gears up or down or with vehicles with the feature to limit or lockout gears.

The advent of newer engine/transmission power train controls have outmoded that old advice.

Hence the reason I keep mentioning READ THE OWNERS MANUAL.

Todays systems collect a considerable amount of data, processes that data and then determines what gear to go to, what RPM to shift at and it does it fully automatically without any need for driver input. The systems are designed to protect the engine and transmission whether that is from "lugging", "overreving"and for best performance under those conditions.

For some weird reason folks think it is bad when a gas engine exceeds 2K RPM, perhaps back in the olden days it was because the redlines were often 3,200 RPM- 3,600 RPM? and the engines were screaming at 2K RPM because of the gearing and wide gear spread of 3 and 4 speed transmissions..Not to mention older engines had less than half the HP and TQ these newer engines have..

Don't know about GMs but Ford does use an "adaptive learn" strategy and when the power train control senses different loads and conditions it will learn and adjust shifting strategy to your new driving style.

I get it, you and many other folks are scared of new features and old habits tend to never die but perhaps you should try using those features and relax a bit before condemning them for everyone.

My advice to the OP still stands, DO NOTHING, you do not have to manually micromanage what gear to be in going up or down the hills, just put in drive and enable the TOW/HAUL as long as you are not exceeding recommended posted speeds and your not trying to win the hole shoot off the starting line it will be fine.

You always have the option to tap the brakes going down the hill which will over ride the current gear selection and downshift for you when in TOW/HAUL.