[KenH.]

I see this mentioned in a lot of threads so instead of putting it into one of those i figured I would write a short post about it.

I think i really only experienced this the first two days I drove the car. When I wanted to go to second and it tried to put me in 4th i said nope and waited for the solenoid to release and dropped it into 2nd and went on my way. I have no interest in skipping the fun gears.

My experience with this is that the car has some type of learning feature for skip shift. It doesn't try to make me skip to 4th at all unless i'm super light on the gas pedal now and if i let it then it starts trying to get me into 4th more often, but I don't let it so it backs off again.

lol .. so i know how that sounds, so I might be full of shit. Maybe my skip shift is defective, but I've got over 5k on the car and I can tell you with the way I have been driving it (not accepting the skip shift) the car does not try to skip shift on me if i'm above 2k rpms and I almost never shift below 2k so it's been at most a minor inconvenience which is not the impression I get from the people complaining about it on here. Maybe give my method a try and don't let it shift you to 4th and see if it backs off.

[SSDan]

Skip shift engages the lock out solenoid in first gear from a stop as the speed increases to 15 mph and stays in the locked out position until the speed goes above 19 mph. The skip shift message flags up right around that 15 mph mark but has a tendency to linger on for a few seconds once you pass 19 mph. So you can shift to second gear below 15 or above 19 regardless of the dash message. I doubt you have anything magic with the feature doing any learning or anything defective either. Like me I suspicion you have subconsciously trained yourself to avoid the narrow band of speed in which the solenoid engages and forces a 1-4 shift.

The few times it still catches me I just shift to fourth with a quick tap, leaving the clutch engaged and then immediately shift up to third. A slow speed pull away in 3rd is a lot easier on the engine than lugging away in 4th gear.

[KenH.]

So the math behind it is from 15 to 19 it wants to push you into 4th gear. I did not make that correlation. So i guess it's just driving habits that will determine whether you have a problem with skip shift. So i guess my waiting for it to disengage the solenoid was just waiting to drop below 15mph. Interesting.

Makes sense I only hit the skip shift the first couple days I had the car since I was taking my time learning how to smoothly shift it. I haven't driven a manual since my Cobalt SS that I sold in 2012. That car was so damn twitchy in first gear. Put someone in the drivers seat not familiar with how to feather the clutch and you'd get a nice case of whiplash.

Thanks for the info!

[jimmypop13]

You can always buy a cheap harness to disable it or have it removed with a tune