2012, reg cab 4cyl 4x4.... 5spd AUTO?? am i crazy??

ok, i'm beginning to think i'm crazy here. but i swear it seems like my truck has a 5 spd Auto. According to toyotas website, you can't configure a truck with my specs (2012, reg cab 4x4, 4cyl) with a 5spd auto, just a 4spd.




this is what my shifter looks like in case you manual tranny guys aren't familiar.



as you can see, you can shift through the gears manually. "L" leaves it in 1st. "2" will let the truck shift on it's own between 1st and 2nd, but no higher, "3", same thing through the 1st 3 gears. now here's the thing, if i put it in "3" and rev it out (highway onramp acceleration) and then bump it over to "D" it will upshift once, the revs will hang for a second, and then they will drop again (5th gear??) If I leave it in "D" and am accelerating going up hill, it will "drop a gear" and the revs will jump about 500rpm, then if i keep on it, it will drop another gear to what i presume is "3" or 3rd gear and the revs will jump about 1500rpm. it's very slight, but a def noticeable 500rpm drop or climb when in "D".

here's a somewhat crappy video, road was bumpy and traffic so i couldn't accelerate too hard, but if you look close you can see 4 RPM drops (4 shifts equals 5 gears, yes?)

I wish there was time on the video to point out the shifts, but 1st one is at 20mph, second about 38mph, third about 46mph, and last about 48mph. the last one is just kind of a rev hang, but if i was accelerating harder the MPH difference would have been greater than 46-48

am i nuts?

 

The last little shift you detect is your torque converter locking up and dropping the RPM's a little bit more. It is not a 5th gear.

 

What does this have to do with how many gears your transmission has? and this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

Looks like it went into over drive.

 

hmm.... interesting.

no idea how that all works, but it will "unlock" when accelerating up a hill giving me a little more RPMs before shifting to third?


it's really kind of a pain actually cause in a light/medium hilly area it will go back and forth (gear hunting) between the two searching for the right RPM. i'll have to drop it to "3" to get it to stop hunting.

also if it's a slight incline i can get it to hold that "unlocked" position for quite a while with a constant pressure on the accelerator.


weird.

 

which in any sense of the word is just another gear.

 

The 3rd shift was into over drive. When the torque convertor locks up, it matches the engine to the transmission without slipping anymore. Read about it here.

 

That's exactly what it does. It's a clutch for automatic transmissions. Check the link I just posted to read up about them.

 

interesting, thanks.

 

no problem. Nice truck, I wish I had bucket seats!

 

cozmo,

It is interesting that you have a 2012 regular cab with an automatic transmission. I was under the impression that the automatic was no longer available in the 2012s. I have a 20011 regular cab with the automatic. It was difficult to find.

 

Howd you get the builder like that? When I try to build a Taco it looks nothing like that.

 

Plug in a different zip code.

 

This is the answer.