The Nissan Path

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ix5vLrNooU


At a complete stop, when I go from Drive to Manual Shift Mode, why does it always start at 4th gear?

it's not technically a 'sport shift' type of deal, it really only replaces the 'tree' of gears that used to be there.

So in D your max gear is 5th gear. in manual, it defaults to OD off (5th gear off), so your max gear is 4th. 'downshifting' technically only changes your max gear, not what gear the car should be in.

for example if you have it in 4 and floor it, the car will downshift. in a true 'sport' mode this would not happen. It would however happen if we still had the 'tree' of gears and you had it in 4.

i wish it would -stick- in whatever gear you put it in (unless your rpms are too low) like a real sport mode shift, but then again our cars aren't sports cars

Glad someone just clarified that. I was confused by that as well.

Glad someone just clarified that. I was confused by that as well.

So there's no way to get a torquey 2nd gear when towing?

Thanks for that great explanation doctahjones

FLpathFinder wrote:Glad someone just clarified that. I was confused by that as well.

So there's no way to get a torquey 2nd gear when towing?

You can still down shift to 2 and have that as your max gear.

so it would be like shifting through the tree of gears then.

You can also use this for 2nd gear start. As was mentioned, anytime you shift to manual, it simply locks out 5th gear and shows "4" on the display but keeps you in whatever gear you were in. So if stopped...obviously you're really in 1st. If you then downshift through the selections to 1st and then back up to 2nd, you can then start out in 2nd gear.

Gotcha, thanks bud

skinny2 wrote:You can also use this for 2nd gear start. As was mentioned, anytime you shift to manual, it simply locks out 5th gear and shows "4" on the display but keeps you in whatever gear you were in. So if stopped...obviously you're really in 1st. If you then downshift through the selections to 1st and then back up to 2nd, you can then start out in 2nd gear.

doesn't' actually lock out 5th. you can still shift up to it. just by default it "turns OD off" when you go into manual mode, so it puts the max gear at 4.


also you can't start out in 2nd gear from a stop. or i've not found a way to actually do this. if you're stopped you are actually in 1st gear, period. you can feel the upshift after you start rolling and hit whatever speed it shifts at.


i use manual mode pretty much every day (i grew up driving stick, it's just in my blood). it took a bit to get used to this version, versus the actual sport shift i had in my acura. i've found it's useful for only a couple of things:

1. you're about to try to pass someone, and want to bump down a gear or two so the pathy will be in the gear you want when you're ready to pass. otherwise you'd floor it and wait a couple seconds for it to downshift once or twice

2. engine braking. i use it alot when i'm in parking lots and rush hour traffic. just put it in 1 or 2 and use the engine braking adjust your speed up/down more easily. also use it alot on the highways instead of using the brake pedal.


again, there's no telling your pathy what gear to go in, other than telling it the max gear it can use, just like when you had the gear 'tree' (is there a better term for that? back when you had 1-2, 3, D, N, R, P gates to go through).

doctahjones wrote:
also you can't start out in 2nd gear from a stop. or i've not found a way to actually do this. if you're stopped you are actually in 1st gear, period. you can feel the upshift after you start rolling and hit whatever speed it shifts at.

When stopped, shift to manual and downshift to 1st and then back to 2nd. It starts in 2nd...you can downshift back to first if you wish. I've used this in slippery conditions as it gives you much better throttle control and obviously less torque to the wheels. This is actually pretty common on a lot of vehicles. Pretty much every truck I've owned over the last ten years had an option to start in 2nd.

I rarely use the manual mode but as you mentioned, it's great for sling-shot passing. I usually pass at least two vehicles a day on my normal commute out hilly/curvy two-lane roads. It's great to go into a turn and downshift to 3rd and come out of the turn ready to pass. Saves a second or so. I do use the manual sometimes in traffic to keep it from shifting constantly but I rarely get stuck in stop-n-go.

I am learning more about the Pathfinder and how it operates, than any other vehicle I have ever driven, thanks to this forum. Thanks for the info, guys.

skinny2 wrote: When stopped, shift to manual and downshift to 1st and then back to 2nd. It starts in 2nd...you can downshift back to first if you wish. I've used this in slippery conditions as it gives you much better throttle control and obviously less torque to the wheels. This is actually pretty common on a lot of vehicles. Pretty much every truck I've owned over the last ten years had an option to start in 2nd.

doesn't seem to work like that for me. i tried it about 10 times yesterday. come to a stop light. shift down to 1, wait a couple seconds, shift to 2, wait for the light and then go.

every time it would shift from 1 to 2. can see the shift right when i hit ~20mph, and it's not the vvt kicking in you can feel it shift. on one of the runs i also kicked it back down to 1 when i was doing ~10mph and there was no downshift, meaning it was already in 1.

maybe it's only a v6 thing? and/or do you have the 2wd/auto/4hi/4lo type 4wd, or just 2wd/4hi/4lo version?


here's a clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pUaL-1w0BY&hd=1

I played around with mine tonight and found something interesting. Mine only seems to do it on a cold start. That was when I always used it in the winter; pulling out of my drive which is steep. In lieu of switching to 4x4 for just a 100', I would nurse it up the hill in 2wd and found starting in 2nd was best. The other day when I tried it again, it was directly after backing out of my space at work.

So either it's related to going from Reverse and then shifting manually....or it has to do with cold-start idle? I tried it a couple times tonight after pulling out of the parking lot and the first light I stopped it performed like yours. So I guess trying when cold after backing up and see what happens.

i could see it maybe being a cold start kind of thing, ecu might be protecting the powertrain or something...but you'd think it would just cut power instead of keeping it in second.

will try again in the winter season