hey, i'm new here. i hope this is the right forum for this.

Anyway.. Today i was talking to this kid, and he drives a mid 90s Honda(i forgot what model). But anyway, he said that his car is Automatic, but he has some kind of manual shift kit. He said that the kit enables him to shift between the four speeds on his automatic transmission. I thought he was talking about the different drives, but he wasnt. He actually has to shift.. but without the clutch. I know some newer cars have a similar feature, but this sounded weird.

Was he lying? or does this mystery kit actually exist?

 

don't know about honda's, but a lot of domestic auto trans have complete manual valve bodies that require shifting through every gear. the ecu is usually completely cut out of the equation when you switch to that type of valve body.
i'm sure any auto trans valve body could be modded into a full manual one, although for what point?
did u actually sit in the car, did he actually HAVE to shift every gear?
the newer car's shifting thing is *usually* pretty useless. the trans doesn't shift any faster, u just get to hold the gear as long as u want. usually with the modded valve bodies the trans fluid pressure is raised to get a harder/quicker shift (you actually can get 1-2, 2-3 chirp, etc)
(trying to make it very general as i don't really know the exact specifics of how the trans works)

 

i didnt exactly see the car.. but thats what i was told. i guess its possible.

 

He's probably just cycling the shifter manually. I don't think the computer will let you downshift if the resulting RPM is too high.

That manumatic feature on the newer autos is pure marketing. It's absolutely useless in my opinion.

 

I have an auto teg with a bad transmission, the car doesn't down shift by itself, u gotta do it manually, but it upshifts just fine. I think the guy was either bullshittin u or has a similar problem as mine.

 

Isn't he talking about the "auto-stick"? Usual models have the P/R/N/D/2/1 on the right side but if you move the stick to the left, then it's 1 thru overdrive kinda like a ratchet-shift.

I know early '90s Ford Probe and some 5th gen preludes had this; many others did too but those are just the ones I can think of right off the top of my head.