When driving a car fitted with automatic transmission what would you use 'kick down'for?

Answer 1

You would use the automatic transmission kick down to shift the transmission into a lower gear when you need to go into full throttle (FT) to pass another car or when the load on the vehicle becomes so great that shifting into a lower gear would increase engine RPM so the engine would not get lugged down. Different engines respond to "lugging" differently. Lugging an engine is not good on the engine, over time lugging an engine has been associated with burned valves and pinging (predetonation) and carbon build up. Most manufacturers have incorporated some means of down shifting automatically under full throttle an hauling heavy loads. Its a convenient way to keep the engine from lugging. The same thing can be accomplished by manually shifting the engine into a lower gear at the shifter, weather its at the column or in the console. As engine RPM's increase one can simply shift into the next higher gear to prevent the engine from over reving.