I wanted to post this to this forum because this is the only forum i have seen anyone talk about this.
I have a 2018 392 Daytona Charger, and sometimes when i go to up shift with the paddle the car will downshift instead.
I took my car to one dealership and after looking at it for 3 days the service guys told me that the up-shift is on the right and the down-shift is on the left and they couldn't find anything wrong with it.
Today i took my car to another Dealership to have it looked at. The mechanic told me, that after researching the problem, it is a standard problem on 392's and hellcats. He said if you up shift, to quick the car will interpret the up-shift as a down-shift because the voltage from the up shift is not high enough to register as an up-shift. And that it is recommended to hold the paddle for more then 1 second. There is no fix for this because it is driver error by not holding the paddle shiftier for more then 1 second.
I just wanted to post this for anyone who has this problem. Its not a fix but at least you can know what "Dodge" says about the problem.
What Dodge has said about this at least what has been posted on this thread is in my humble opinion nonsense. How the paddle is operated has no bearing on the behavior. And frankly with some additional thought on this if it did that would be at least as troubling to me as the real cause. If Dodge can't produce paddle shifters that don't get confused by how they are operated it ought to get out of the car business.
My 2018 Hellcat has been manifesting this +paddle causing a downshift now for some months.
I have not yet spoken to a dealer service department about this I wanted to read of others experiences first. I wanted to avoid the "they all do that", "unable to reproduce the behavior" and so on phases.
But the problem is to the point I can't use the +paddle shifter for a shift at anything above a fast idle for fear if I shift at a higher RPM the spurious downshift would cause an engine over speed event or upset the car and cause a loss of control.
This loss of control is a real concern. More than once I've had the down shift occur during a turn when intending to go from 2nd to 3rd the transmission instead shifts back to 1st gear. This occurred on dry pavement. But my Hellcat is driven in rain or shine and if a down shift occurred the rear tires could break loose and cause a loss of vehicle control.
I won't bore you with the details but I tried various things to see if I could affect this behavior. No matter how I work the paddle no matter if the wheel is straight ahead and steady or turned or being turned plays a role. The behavior occurs at random times regardless of whether the engine and transmission are cold, warm, or fully up to temperature.
What I have done is on a highway with the transmission lever in the manual shift position to up shift then down shift then up shift again say going from 7th to 8th then back to 7th again and repeating this -- the engine RPMs change very little -- and maybe once in 10 or 12 times pulling the +paddle causes the transmission to shift to 6th rather than shift up to 8th.
Less common but I think related is once in a while an otherwise legitimate shift is ignored and it is not ignored because the shift was attempted at too low an RPM.
The behavior is not related to how I work the paddle and I repeat the letter from FCA on this is nonsense. It is what is offered when the factory has no clue and is trying to brush off the problem but at the same time possibly buy some time to figure out what is going on and what to do about it.
My analysis is the problem is a shift signal from the +paddle can apparently be mistaken for a down shift signal. This suggest the shift signal enters the engine/transmission controller on the same input pin and it is a voltage level that is used to distinguish between an up shift or down shift.
For some reason the +paddle once in awhile and for reasons unknown generates a voltage signal that appears to be a down shift signal. Or the signal is in some no man's land between an up shift and down shift -- or no signal is even generated -- and the signal is ignored.
That the -paddle shifter does not (at least so far) result in an occasional upshift suggests the error can only be in one direction. It also clearly makes the claim by FCA that how the paddle is operated is the problem highly suspect to be kind, though calling it nonsense earlier suggests my "kindness" is too little too late...
What I did do is report this via Dodge Customer Care. I submitted a report 4/24. I received a reply the next day that among other things my report had been escalated "to the Case Management team".
I was supplied with a case number.
Then yesterday I received another email this time from the case manager assigned to my case. Among other things she indicated she would be in touch by phone. Given it is barely 24 hours since the email that I have not been contacted yet is not that upsetting.
More when I know more.
