i have a 2008 4 door jk. first jeep for me. it seems at highway speeds, and the slighest incline, my jeep is down shifting to make the climb. seems like i always have to have my foot into the pedal to make it go. had a 4 cylinder honda element that cruised much better. please dont tell me its a jeep thing again. tired of hearing excuses

 

Ok its not a Jeep thing. Its a 3.8L with auto thing. the engine is under powered for the unlimited. From what I hear it gets worse with bigger tires. The flashpack and procal can change the shift pionts in the tranny but its not the cure. That would involve new gears.

 

Have you made good use of the overdrive "off" button?
I have found if the Jeep is bogging down because the down-shift seems delayed, hitting the button will make it down-shift when you want it to.

And what you describe is NOT a Jeep thing. My brother's 2008 Honda Civic down-shifts a lot, too. It's just not as apparent. The Jeep is just doing what it's supposed to do, to let the engine turn faster. After all, it takes more power to go uphill.

 

You guys, I don't know what are you talking about. I can't understand because I have a manual with 4.1 ratio, but I wish to try an auto with X/Sahara ratio; just trying to understand what is "slow"

Probably the OP has a real problem with the engine

Also a CAI can help...

 

Sounds like normal 3.8L complaint to me. How about gear ratios from the original poster..

 

Yup. I couldn't imagine having this anemic motor in a 4 door....

 

Normally I would agree with the OP about the 3.8 being a real dog on inclines but this past weekend I made an 800 km trip full of inclines that I've made many times before and found myself not shifting down nearly as often as I normally would. I had the cruise set at about 115 - 120 kph in 6th gear and I only had to downshift 2 - 3 times the whole trip. The only explanation I can come up with is the cat back system I installed a couple months ago must really be helping out.

 

3.8L even on my 2 door was bogging down. If your jeep is still "new" give the engine some time to break in -- after my first 1k miles I noticed more power on the inclines. A new intake will help as well -- I'm going with one in the spring.

 

I'm a novice at jeeping.. etc.. but visited 4wd dot com and bought a BANKS cold air intake. (reason why 4wd dot com and nobody else.. it's on sale 201.00 bucks..) called banks in CA and they said they couldn't touch it for that price.. but besides the price.. that same downshift up a small incline will be replaced with a normal growl.. and no downshift but increased power and mpg. everybody should venture down this path.

and just a small FYI I have an automatic, 15k miles stock 18's sahara tires grab rubber on dry pavement it has that much -- I'm not a race guy in a 4wd, but for little $ this pushes out power.. check out videos on you tube.

BANKS POWER

 

A Superchips Flashpaq from Northridge4x4 will resolve that issue in seconds!