XSeries-forum

Quite often, when doing down a steep hill, having taken my foot off the accelerator, the brakes will be applied and the engine will rev to approx 4000 RPM. Someone has said that this is a "feature" akin to pre-emptive braking but to me it seems like problem as it doesn't happen all the time and does not seem to be related to the traction control (in that no traction control light comes on when this happens. Blipping the throttle seems to cure it - as the braking effect ceases and the revs return to normal. Any ideas? Car is a 2002 3.0i with 76k miles on the clock.

Forgive my ignorance but I wasn't aware that E53 had traction control. Never once felt the brakes being independantly applied.
I do get the rev surge when going down a decent hill though.
Engine braking I presumed.

It's normal for the E53 to do this is is engine braking. The gearbox / DSC system monitors down hill conditions and if you need to press the brake to hold the desired speed it changes down and hold the desired speed under engine braking as you would in a manual to save cooking the brakes.
And yes DSC is traction control.

Ditto the above! The amount of engine braking depends on how hard you step on the brakes, so it will vary each time, a heavy braking application will drop the gearbox down two gears instead of the usual one. Applying the accelerator changes back up again.

I still have trans fail safe come on when going down certain hills.very odd.[emoji53]

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[quote="couchiedemon"]
Quite often, when doing down a steep hill, having taken my foot off the accelerator, the brakes will be applied and the engine will rev to approx 4000 RPM. Someone has said that this is a "feature" akin to pre-emptive braking but to me it seems like problem as it doesn't happen all the time and does not seem to be related to the traction control (in that no traction control light comes on when this happens. Blipping the throttle seems to cure it - as the braking effect ceases and the revs return to normal. Any ideas? Car is a 2002 3.0i with 76k miles on the clock.
[/quote]

i think thats normal,
if i remember correctly, pressing the dsc button will turn off this feature.

All very normal....most automatics do this..

I know I have a different engine but mine doesn’t do anything that sounds as aggressive as you suggest yours does. You can feel it hold back a bit if your foot is off throttle and it will change down but only when at a speed that is appropriate. If hill is steep (on road) it will pick up speed again unless brakes are applied.