Just got back from a successful trip to the foothills of the NJ Skylands. On the way up the GPS took me on a route that had me making a sharp right turn onto a steep hill. I was scared for a second that without any momentum I would not make it up. I was just creeping at a 5 or 10 mph with my foot floored. I shifted the the gear selector into the lowest setting and it went down to first and the coach picked up speed and climbed the hill.

How should a coach react in a situation like that. I assumed that will my foot floored I'd hit a kick down switch and it would go into first. Thanks for the advice.

If your kickdown switch and solenoid are operating, the transmission should downshift at almost any speed below the maximum upshift point. In otherwords, if you are in 3rd, you should get 2 cnd at a speed below 65 if you floor it. The same goes for 1st gear at lower speeds--I know mine will go into first below about 40 mph. There is a lot of controversy about disabling the switch--I personally think that is a mistake since you don't always have time to manually downshift. I do agree that under hard pulls up hill that it is better to manually downshift using the shift lever, but that is a different situation. Either your switch is misadjusted, your pedal rod is bent, or the system has been disabled by a P.O. My 78 has run for 145,000 miles with the kickdown working and it doesn't seem to have hurt anything. I find it very handy and safer when you need an immediate downshift.

Just got back from a successful trip to the foothills of the NJ Skylands. On the way up the GPS took me on a route that had me making a sharp right turn onto a steep hill. I was scared for a second that without any momentum I would not make it up. I was just creeping at a 5 or 10 mph with my foot floored.