Somewhere in this range of the lever’s arc, you can feel a slight resistance from the lever’s internal spring. This is where the line pressure begins to rise, ultimately causing a downshift. Properly dialing in the lever’s range of motion is critical to shift performance and transmission longevity. Says Jason:
“For the FIRST HALF OF IT'S TRAVEL RANGE, there is very little resistance and the LEVER DOES NOTHING. AT THE HALFWAY POINT, you can feel where it starts to hit the valve inside the trans, AND THATS'S THE POSITION THE LEVER MUST BE IN AT IDLE.”
This is one of several places I disagree with the author. Of course there's dead travel in the lever on the bench with no pressure on the internal valves, but when the engine is running there's pressure pushing on the valves and the lever. The fact that properly adjusted factory linkage places the lever
full forward at idle, and the fact that very little throttle input will cause the trans to upshift, proves that lever travel of way less then "half point" initiates a pressure rise.
At WOT, the kick-down lever should be positioned at the end of its range of travel. This ensures accurate shift points and a proper increase in line pressure..
Another point of disagreement; in many cases when the linkage/cable is adjusted so that the lever is full back at WOT, the light-throttle upshifts will be late and at WOT the trans might not upshift at all (road speed shift point exceeds engine rpm capability).
Bottom line, any anomalies when using the factory linkage are user-induced...plain and simple, the linkage works when not worn out, dicked with or mismatched parts are in place.
