kinda what our car does... it's only problematic on the hills where we live where it tries to "econobox" you going uphill and it downshifts going down... if you pound the brake pedal going into a corner, it drops a gear for you, trying to be sporty(which i guess is cool) but i don't drive her car fast enough to warrant any sporty trans behavior... i would prefer for it to drop gear when i open the throttle going uphill, without it having to bog down to like 30 and then kick down and turn nearly 4000 RPM, and i would like to go downhill without it downshifting and turning 3000 RPM just to try and hold the vehicle... i guess what i'm wanting is a "dumb" automatic that doesn't try and read driver input patterns...

 

Well, the hills of WestVirginia are much more than the flatlands of Mississippi. I must admit, I've never felt the car drop a gear to retard speed on the downslope while running in "cruise", but I guess anything's possible ...

 

Our diesel f350 would drop 2 gears while we were towing to keep 72 MPH, thing was close to redline and it was on cruise control

 

The last thing I would try before rebuilding the valve body and going through that head ache is try disconnecting the battery for 30 mins and see if it still does it. I know that some of the auto trans have a computer that learns your driving habits and tunes your shift to those habits. Some times you can reset the computer by disconnecting the battery for awhile. Mind you I didnt read all the post above me if I repeated something I'm sorry.

 

note, this is not using cruise... the car isn't equipped with it,lol... car downshifts as you brake and if you're going downhill, it stays in that lower gear... wouldn't be an issue but it is reluctant to return to the higher gear, like it thinks it's still on the steep hill...