I know exactly what hill you are talking about (I go through Asheville about 3 times a year) . Even in my truck with 3.4 and manual tranny it's still a pain to go up, it's just a really steep hill that goes on forever. There isn't much you can do to noticeably help with the climb, it's just something you're probably going to have to deal with.

 

Boy, old threads never die. Luckily she now has a boyfriend at the same college and he does all the driving.

 

Haha. I didn't know this was an old thread.

 

Does anyone else get a strange smell when your runner downshifts to get uo a hill?

 

That's a good indicator that you need to install one of these:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eB...category=33733

Won't cure the smell, but sure makes it more fun to drive and eliminates all those problems the guys in the above thread have..

 

how hard would it be to change from auto to manual? How much you think a shop will do it for?