A lot of people who hop into a Rap from some other vehicle have expectations that aren’t met about the “shift quality”. I think 85% of this is their previous vehicle shift strategy is either luxury focused, or the 3 percent of people who mistakenly believe that bmw drivelines are better. Then there are the ones who bemoan that the Raptor doesn’t shift like their other high dollar ride with a fancy dual clutch transmission.
There are definitely some trucks that exhibit weird and even problematic shift behavior. But a lot of it is a misunderstanding.
1) warm up. Every 2017+ Raptor shifts differently while the transmission is in its initial warm up. If you hop in the truck, start and take off like a commuter, the Rap behaves a lot different post warm up. It’s ok to drive in this mode, but it’s not prudent to start caning the truck while it’s warming up.
Don’t expect crisp, fast, and smooth upshifts in warm up mode.
2) It is possible to elicit what I call: an inarticulate upshift or downshift under certain conditions. If you gas and release at the exact moment the computer commits to an upshift or downshift, it’s clunky. Because the computer and mechanics are fast, but they’re reactive to your inputs. You can observe this on a lot of vehicles, but the Rap is big, heavy and has a lot of reciprocating mass, so this effect is significantly amplified in the Rap.
3) The mysterious “adaptive shifting”. Honestly, I don’t get this at all. I feel like the truck is programmed to get lazy and stay lazy. Let’s say I leave the truck in normal eco mode. We’re talking full on drive it like I stole it. I’ll get in the truck the next time, and the next time and the next time and it will still jump to 10th gear by 42mph, and still wait 2-5 seconds to shift from 3rd to first at a full stop, resulting in a 3rd gear take off, then a commanded downshift but it will never downshift to first. In sport mode, certain values are simply locked out by programming which in my truck means that rpms cannot drop below 1800 in any gear but the minimum up shift is a bit higher and longer. Ironically, in sport mode, to me it seems to relax if not driving sporty.
For the grinding, try to recreate the issue, then, switch the transfer case to 4A and retry. If the grinding goes away, it’s about 98% to be IWE, and likely the solenoid or vacuum lines. If the grinding doesn’t go away, that doesn’t rule out IWE, it could have started as an IWE problem, and persisted causing damage to the engagement mechanism itself.
