Losing power at top end

[jnorion]

My car has the 4EAT and one of the things that's really impressed me about it is that it's the only auto tranny I've ever driven that has easily let me accelerate all the way to redline. But I've noticed power problems at the top that I'm wondering about.

When I hit about 5500 RPM or so, the power suddenly falls off. The engine doesn't cut off, it revs just fine, but the car doesn't accelerate at all (or barely). This happens especially when I go to pass on the freeway and it downshifts suddenly into 2nd, which pushes it instantly up to almost 6k. I feel like I can actually pass faster without shifting down, or I would be able to except the car will only rev so much before shifting on its own (I know I can get around this by leaving the selector in 3rd).

Basically I want to know if this is normal. This is the only 1st gen Legacy I've driven, so I don't know if that's just a characteristic of the engine that the powerband is so much lower, or if there's actually something wrong with mine that I could fix to make it better.

[Legacy777]

It's probably normal. At that high of RPM, you're outside the best usable power band on the engine.

However you do get torque multiplication with the automatic at full throttle, which is probably why it feels good all the way to redline.

When I had my AT, I felt the same way. It revved good all the way to redline, but starting losing some of it's grunt as the rpms were higher.

[jnorion]

It didn't really feel like anything was wrong, just have never felt an engine that falls off quite that much.

So here's a related question, then: How badly does it hurt the transmission if I manually shove it from drive into 3rd to pass on the freeway?

[Legacy777]

I don't know...probably not much.....I wouldn't worry about it, I did it....

[jnorion]

Cool!

[Manarius]

Why bother downshifting, a press of the pedal and you can get that tranny to snap back into 3rd no problem.

[jnorion]

The problem isn't getting it into 3rd, the problem is keeping it from shifting into 2nd when I really get on it to pass. When it drops to 2nd it revs from about 3.5k-4k and jumps up to almost 6k, effectively missing a lot of the powerband of the car. I would like to lock it into 3rd using the manual button, but I have to put it in the 3rd position on the shifter first.