I find the 7-speed gearbox is in too much of a hurry to drop the revs and it ends up at 1500 RPM a lot. The 350 engine is not very responsive until about 2200 RPM and I like engine braking when I drive. I don’t know what others do but I put the gearbox in 3 when I am driving in town, bump it up to 4 if local speeds are over 40 and I leave it in 5 on the freeway when the traffic is moving under 50.

Downshifts are slow but I drop it down a few gears when I am getting off the freeway or taking curves. There is a thread on the E55/E63 AMG forum called: "Holy Crap you guys.....sneaky ECU reset WORKS!!! " that does help sharpen responses.

I thought the 7-speed in a CLS500 acted much like my CLK350. I found the 7-speed in an SLK55 nearly perfect but for non-AMG models I guess it is tuned more for fuel economy than performance.

Any one else have any experience with this?

 

I am ok on the street but still trying to figure out what to do on the track.

I tried the reset but that seems really only to work when the transmission is in automatic mode. The AMGs downshift s much as two gears, maybe more, under hard braking. The CLK350 seems to downshift one gear under light braking but not under hard, or maybe I am not noticing it.

In manual, it upshifts at redline and seems to be fairly quick, but I don't know if that has anything to do with the reset or not. It is interesting that it ignores manual mode once it hits redline.

The problem with downshifts is figuring out what gear you are in without looking at the display. If you are going too fast for the gear, it doesn't shift and it doesn't remember, so if you think you are downshifting two gears it may only be one. You have to keep looking to be sure you are in the right gear, and that isn't what you want to be doing when you are braking for a turn.

 

I too find that I have no issue with the upshifting. Resetting the ECU helps make it a little crisper and at wide-open-throttle it delays shifting until it hits the redline so that is fine.

On downshifting, I have not been able to determine when it will allow me to downshift and into what gear. The fact that it is so slow to downshift makes it more difficult because I don't know if I need to wait for a slow shift or if it will ignore my request altogether.

The only consolation is that after driving the car for about 30,000 miles by now I have a pretty good idea of what gear I am in. It sure would be nice if a tuner would offer transmission reprogramming for more spirited driving.

 

agree with all posts above, i tend to leave it in auto and blast lol.

been meaning to get sprint booster for a while just not had time, but i will at some point lol.

 

I usually use manual mode when I want to have fun or engine break. The shifts are jerky and not very fun.

 

I regularly use the steering wheel commands to get some engine braking, even in town.
I sometimes use the manual mode (M) for mountain driving.