Starting in high gear

Is it normal for the new tundra to feel like it's starting in high gear? It reminds me of when I had a manual transmission and would try to start off in 2nd gear. High RPM's no power. It does this when I don't come to a complete stop, slow right hand turns for example. A good example is when I turn right into my driveway, my driveway is uphill and the truck seems to struggle climbing unless I manually downshift to first. Is this normal?

 

Definitely not.

 

Yes, perfectly normal. Truck starts off in fourth gear. Has to do with the torque. Sport or Tow+ will help.

 

From a stop, mine always starts in first gear. Rolling stops it might start in third. Have Never seen it start off in fourth. Mode doesn't matter.

 

I thought it was third gear....That's what I was seeing on the car scanner app.

Anyway, you don't get a full downshift to 1st until 2 or 3 mph or slower, from my observation.

It's annoying, for sure. Not sure why Toyota did that. The worst is when you hit the gas right as it downshifts and it hesitates for a split second.

 

Unfortunately this is how they have it programmed. It won’t shift into first unless you go 3 mph or less. I wish Toyota would change this. It is a heavy rig and should drop into first sooner to help get the mass moving at slow speeds. Poor engineering from a drivability point of view.

 

Starting in high gear would mean low rpm’s not high rpm’s. But yes at lower speeds it’s normal for it to down shift to lower gears when it needs power and show higher rpm’s. At higher speeds it seems to use turbos more unless you really goose it.

 

What he was referring to is the trans stays in 2 or third gear at very low speeds instead of dropping into 1st. When you try to increase speed again or climb a grade the torque converter has to slip a lot to get truck moving again. So you hear engine reving as torque converter slips to keep engine from stalling.

 

The engine revs up as the TC slips trying to get the truck moving in 3rd. It takes more revs to get it going in 3rd than in 1st.

 

Agreeing with what pretty much everyone here has said. The only times I’ve experienced the “throttle lag” is when I’m slowing to a stop but then get going again before getting under 3-5mph. From a dead stop, scan gauge has always shown being in 1st gear. If I’m slowing down, it stays in 3rd until you’re basically stopped. As Perry and retro said, the torque converter slips until you’re at an appropriate speed to lockup for a moment and then shift into 4th. It’s annoying for sure, but it doesn’t happen often enough for me to care about it too much. At least the yota 10 speed only skips gears (mostly 2nd gear from my experience) on downshifts and not upshifts too like fords’ 10 speed.

 

I don’t know anything about any of this.

When would you notice this? Doing a rolling ‘stop’? I’ve never noticed an issue with mine? Is this a problem? Or does it work as intended, but you just don’t like it?

 

Thanks everyone. Seems odd Toyota would engineer it that way, I guess I'll manually drop it to first when I pull into my driveway.

 

If you have to manually shift your automatic transmission into first gear to pull into your driveway, you should go straight to the dealer.

 

Or slow down to 3 mph as you enter your driveway so it will drop to 1st.

 

It's noticeable when you slow down to 4-8mph then try to accelerate again. It's drivable, just annoying that's it's overgeared for a few seconds. I also think it's a waste of fuel. It probably wastes more fuel being overgeared than it saves with the autostop.

 

Rolling stops going uphill are usually where I notice it. When you’re going downhill and do a rolling stop it’s actually nice to have. Even on flat ground, it’s fine. The only time I notice it is when I’m getting on the freeway (inclined on-ramp) and the meter is on so I’m carrying a tiny amount of speed into taking off. If you stomp on the gas really quickly and let off a bit, it will downshift to second, so it’s not a big deal.