Mountain driving

imgoin4it wrote:
Transmission will do most of the work, but if you are going up an incline and it is such the transmission starts "hunting",shifting up then down just manually put it in a lower gear a pick a reasonable speed for the gear and go up the hill. If you have an exhaust break start down the hill at the speed where it will maintain the speed with out increasing or without using the service brakes. You do not want to allow going downhill too fast. With a little experience this will all become second nature.

This!

If the trans downshifts and holds gear till you reach the summit, just leave it in D. However if it "hunts" gears as in downshifts then upshifts then downshifts again, or downshifts 2 gears then upshifts 1 then downshifts back down, etc, then you need to throw it in a gear where it has enough power to pull at a steady speed. I have a gas and lug it down pretty hard sometimes. On a long hill, I will drop it into a lower gear and just cruise along till it summits even if that means going 30mph or 40 mph. If the trans holds gear okay even if it slightly looses speed, then there is no reason to mess with the shifter. Like the above poster said, after a few hundred miles in the hills, you will have it figured out. If you know it's about to downshift, slowly let your foot out of the petal till it shifts, then slowly put your foot back in it and enjoy the new found power. That way it doesn't violently shift to like 4000 rpm. KEep an eye on your trans and engine temp and if the trans starts getting real warm, put an auxillery trans cooler in line with the stock one. I have a tru-cool, the big one and it's great. FWIW I only tow in "3" to keep it in the 1:1 gear where it has sufficient power to handle minor hills. Your truck may have enough power to do "d".