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(Keep in mind my car has a 4-speed transmission...)
I owned this same (nearly identical) transmission in my previous car. It
had different software; it was easier to understand. Instead of a WINTER
button it had a HOLD mode/button. Same 3-position shifter, with Drive as
the 3rd position. Press HOLD, and tranny's locked in 3rd. Press HOLD with
the shifter in 2nd position, and tranny's locked in 2nd. 3 guesses what
happened when HOLD was pressed while shifter was in 1st position...! Press
the button once to engage HOLD mode; press it again to exit HOLD mode.
Volvo seems to have bastardized the function of this switch/algorithm to
suit its desires and marketing needs.
UNFORTUNATELY, Volvo was too cheap to fully implement the system which, in
my older (by 7 years) and much cheaper car, included full instrument panel
indicators for shifter position, S/E switch position, as well as the
function of the Hold (Winter, to Volvo) button.
So in the Volvo, not only is there no line-of-sight indication of shifter
position (this is very rare/cheap in *any* car with automatic transmission)
nor of S/E switch position, the single indicator indicates (or tries to) so
many things that it's become practically worthless! Only when the
tranny up-arrow indicator is OFF does it really mean anything (ie, the
shift lever is in the 3rd/Drive position and the winter mode button has not
been pressed and there is no transmission malfunction [another of the
indicator's functions]!).
Now that I've told you how the Hold button worked in my Mazda (and why the
Volvo implementation of it is half-assed); here's how it [sorta] works in
the Volvo:
If you leave the shifter in 3rd/Drive position and press Winter button, the
car is in Winter mode. It will then start in 3rd gear, and upshift to 4th
as speeds get high enough. It also has a save-the-moron feature in which,
if the driver floors the throttle in response to the
much-more-leisurely-than-normal acceleration (from starting in 3rd gear),
the transmission will kick down to low gear (so the car will GO). But,
apart from the save-the-moron kickdown feature, Winter Mode means 2-speed
tranny (the 2 highest gears only).
But using the same winter mode button and lighting the same indicator does
not mean the same thing if the shifter has been moved to a lower gear! In
such cases, the winter button functions as a Hold button (almost exactly as
in my '88 Mazda), useful for manually controlling gear selection, which can
be useful in all sorts of arcane situations (mountainous driving, chassis
dyno testing, or trying to extract the last percent of performance from the
car through a parcticular series of curves). It is also useful for
starting from rest in 2nd gear if 1st is too low for conditions and 3rd is
too high and Goldilocks knows how to drive.
If you [try to] use the system to shift manually, it's possible to become
confused (due to inadequate/missing indicators, thanks a lot Volvo!) as to
whether or not the winter/hold mode is engaged (because once the shifter's
not in 3rd/D position, the indicator is always on, and who has time while
driving to look down at the console to try to notice if neither the green
Economy nor yellow Sport indicators is on? If that sounds unsafe to you,
wonder what Volvo was smoking when they half-implemented a fully-sorted
design). While one can move the shifter handle to 3rd/D position to see if
the light in the instrument panel goes out, I've learned to rock the S/E
switch WHICH WILL ALWAYS TAKE THE ECAT OUT OF WINTER/HOLD MODE. If I
wanted to be sure I was still in winter/hold mode, I'd rock the S/E switch
and then press the winter/hold button.
HTH,
- Dave; '95 854T, 120K mi
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