[paul robert]

I never much liked the fact that my 411 refuses to shift from third to second on part throttle. I was told that Bristol deleted this function but always found this hard to believe.Up until 1971 A727 transmissions did in fact not have "partial throttle kickdown" and as of this year is when Chrysler changed the valve throttle body inside the box to allow for this function. This of course gives the car a much livelier drive.
My car was built late 1972 and first registered Jan 73 and should logically have had this feature. It doesn't as I discovered when we rebuilt the gearbox during the winter months, and of course nothing was deleted by Bristol. It was standard pre-71.
The answer was quite straightforward. Checking the engine number showed that it was a 383 built in 1970 and as engines and gearboxes were shipped over as units it seems more than likely my car was given a 2 year old engine when it was built. So much for the "delete for safety reasons" story.
I now found a small company in the US specialised in Chrysler gearboxes and they have developed a small inexpensive module which bolts right onto the valve body allowing partial throttle kickdown. It's on its way to me but who knows how long it will take to get here under the current circumstances, but when it does and I have installed it I'll report on how it works. It might just make a lot of cars a bit briskier.