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Ok. I have a 2001 Civic with an automatic, the same transmission as yours, .CD. I was playing around today on a city drive, and I came up with a method to keeps your revs down when starting from a stop:
1) Start off in D4 or D3 to allow 1st gear to engage (instead of 2 which forces the car to start off in 2nd gear) to get a bit of a jump off the start. I used D3 because it's easier for the next step.
2) As soon as the car is rolling (5 or so MPH), shift into 2 to force the transmission to prematurely shift into 2nd gear, and the revs below 2000.
3) As soon as the revs reach 2000 or so, shift back to D4. Doing so earlier will have no effect on the shifting because the car tries to keep the revs slightly higher when starting off.
4) Once in D4, modulate the throttle to keep the revs at 2000-2100 RPM. Any less than this and it will not automatically upshift. I found that at this RPM it will feel slightly sluggish until it shifts into 3rd (I didn't see what speed...maybe 25 or so MPH...I'll get back to you on that one) and then quickly locks the torque convertor in 3rd and then shifts into 4th.
Our transmission is unique (compared to my previous Toyota, anyway) in that if you cruise at say 25 mph in slow traffic, it will lock the torque convertor in third gear and maintain 1500 RPM. Very efficient for an inefficient cruising speed. And at 35 mph cruising, it will lock the torque convertor in 4th gear and maintain 1400 or so RPM instead of unlocking easily like most other automatics. In these two scenarios, even if you let off the throttle and then step back on smoothly, it will stay locked, sort of like if you were driving a manual transmission.
Anyway, I'll try again tomorrow.
James
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