1999 Railta downshifting problem

[racana]

On our first trip with our 99 Rialta we experienced major difficulty in manually downshifting into lower gears when going downhill. While climbing hills the automatic transmission seemed to upshift fine through the gears but when going downhill we were rarely able to shift into a lower gear no matter how many times we tried. Has anyone else experienced anything like this happening? When on the rare occasion it would go into a lower gear we couldn't figure out what if anything we had done differently to make it work properly.

[csreese]

Hi,


Just returned from an amazing 9,460 mile trip in our new to us 1998 Rialta. Had exact same issue. Kept rereading the ownwr's manual with no luck. Finally found an online blog that said forget the manual. As you are driving along, ease off gas and down shift into 3rd WITHOUT pressing in button on the gear shft. Do the same to go to second. Going second to first (which is not often) you depress the button on the gear shift. We had no problems after that and crossed the rockies twice. Loving our Rialta!!! Let me know how it goes!


Cindy

[racana]

Hi Cindy,



Thanks so much for the shifting info. It worked like a charm!! How simple! That's just crazy that it wasn't in any of the manuals. I'm really glad to hear that your 98 is still chugging along. How many miles did it have on it? Ours had about 88K. We love ours too but only ventured out 2,000 mi for our first trip and most of it all in Ca.


Thanks again so very much, this will make our next trip a lot less stressfull.



Margaret

[csreese]

racana said:

Hi Cindy,



Thanks so much for the shifting info. It worked like a charm!! How simple! That's just crazy that it wasn't in any of the manuals. I'm really glad to hear that your 98 is still chugging along. How many miles did it have on it? Ours had about 88K. We love ours too but only ventured out 2,000 mi for our first trip and most of it all in Ca.


Thanks again so very much, this will make our next trip a lot less stressfull.



Margaret



Hi Margaret,


So glad it worked. We couldn't believe how simple it was once we figured it out.


We just bought ours Oct. 2009. (and stored it a week later because of snow). It had 38,000 miles on it then. We did two short trips and a week in D.C. (we are in Maine) before our big adventure this summer. We are just at 50,000 miles now.


It was just perfect for two of us.


Cindy

[redement]

2005HD - Last fall driving across county we had a similar problem. We couldn't manually downshift at all, button in or button out. By the time we got into the mountains, I was not a happy camper. Eventually I discovered that by pressing in the button about 2/3 way, I could shift into any gear. My guess is there is a key in the linkage that is out of adjustment. One of my summer projects. Anyone know where or how to look?

[TXPigeon]

It sounds like your problem is in the shift lever mechanism. There's an Allen bolt that holds the head on, then you can carefully remove things to get to the working part.



Duane