Hi there Scotty, I have a 2000 Chevy S10 Pickup 4.3L V6 4 speed automatic with 154,000 miles on it. When I’m going down a steeper hill, I down to shift to 1 to save a bit of wear on my brakes. When I do this, there’s no noise, however, when I shift out of 1 back to drive once I’m on flat ground, there’s a clunk noise, from what sounds like the rear of my truck. What could this be?
Doing that is really hard on the transmission and clutches, and a good way to wear it out quickly. The clunk is the transmission trying shift with a heavily reverse loaded drivetrain (similar to coasting down). Not exactly something it was designed to do. You need to accelerate lightly to remove the backlash in the drivetrain, and then shift. And I would go to 2nd first before shifting to drive.
