57 Hydramatic Shifting
 

My Star Chief shifts into 4th gear about 20-25 MPH. Is this normal? If not, how can I make the shifts at greater MPH, other than using the shift lever to manually shift? Thanks for the replies.

At light throttle that's a normal 3-4 shift.

Normal shift speeds are given in the 57 Hydra-Matic Shop Manual (LINK), Section 13, page 111.

Thanks, that makes me feel better. Guess I just need to put my foot into it a little more!

Thanks for the reference; guess I overlooked that!

Adjusting your linkage (kickdown) will help longer runout.
Hope this helps.

GT

They should shift at around 8, 15 & 22 MPH on a light acceleration.

Is that the rod from the carb?

Yes. Shorten it about 1/16" of an inch and try it.

Just have to give you a shout out, Larry, for hosting the trove of technical information on your web site for our old sleds. I will need to do something with my '57 Hydramatic to keep it on the road, and the tech manual online is great, and the digital indexing is incredibly helpful.

Thanks.

Thanks, such appreciation makes it all worth while. It was a 10+ year effort to get everything that is on the site now. I very much appreciate the help, articles and information I got from others on this forum. I use the site often myself. Bill Hanlon was one of the early contributors , he reviewed the Master Parts Catalog before I put it online and has articles on the site.

In retrospect, I probably should have named it differently, pontiacsafari.com makes people think it is about safaris but it is about all 1955-57 Pontiacs and some later years.