We did talk about this a lot before.
I think Spinn 360 has an electrical fault. This is triggering the Power mode, and the speedo antics. It could be a bad earth. Currently I am suffering electrical problems with my car as well. The difference is, my speedo is not getting a signal at all, so no shift out of first.
I sold my JDM car some months ago. For the last two years, in fact since I rebuilt the tranny, I kept it in Power mode all the time. You can do this with the JDM console switch. It seems to work the same as a friend's BMW 530, they call it Sport mode.
The reason I kept it switched on was I felt the natural [or normal] inclination for the standard shift map to IMMEDIATELY go for a higher gear once the car was moving was causing a lot of gear changing at really low revs. I interpreted this as slow slurring changes with low line pressures, and I saw two potential problems with this
1) Increased oil temperatures because of the low rev low line pressure shifts.
2) Increased friction material wear because of the low line pressure and the longer [drawn out in time] shifts.
Both of these problems are interdependent, as you can see.
Put more succinctly, harder shifts = less wear, less heat.
As for economy, I mentioned this before, also a long time ago. I check every tank, brim to brim. Using Power mode all the time meant an increase in consumption of 1 to 2 mpg, or none at all, depending on driving style.
So I rationalised that given this minor increase in the year's fuel consumption, versus the cost of another gearbox rebuild, it was a no brainer and a no contest. So Power. Permanently.
This English car I now have will only do Power mode based on demand as determined by the rapidity of flooring the throttle. I'm not looking forward to it. If anyone can suggest a way to wire the Econ switch to turn on Power instead, that's what I would like to hear.
Joe
