[me and my metro]

I agree completely with the posts above. For short bursts of acceleration unlocked converters wake up the acceleration. However for cruising you want everything locked up if possible. Back in the pre lockup and pre overdrive days 2.56 gears were popular. The problem was cooling the transmission fluid. I grew up in Southern California and Interstate 5 runs up over the mountains North into the San Joaquin valley. I could always tell which cars and pickups had turbo 400 transmissions because at the top they would shift back into high gear and hot atf would blow out the vent onto the exhaust and smoke like crazy.