Thanks for all the help.
What I found was a comedy of errors.
The carpet/floor mat was doubling over and possibly keeping the kickdown switch from being depressed, I checked switch and had power through the switch to the transmission when it was depressed so I fixed the carpet (after osphoing the base of the pedal).
While bouncing between the engine compartment and the transmission under the car trying to figure how to get to the linkage behind the exhaust manifold to adjust the kickdown I noticed the kickdown arm on the transmssion was very loose. I could move the throttle and linkage and everything looked great but the arm was rotating on the rod coming out of the transmission and not moving anything. I tightened the arm on the rod to give max kickdown and gave everything else the tug and wiggle test.
I took it for a test run and I am amazed by the differance, if you drive it easy(like my wife) it is still in third gear at aprox. 20 mph and fourth at 30mph but if you get on it the 2-3 shift is at 25-30 and the 3-4 shift is over 50 and if you kick it at 40-45 mph it will kickdown a gear and move!
I am wondering if I should back off the kickdown lever just slightly because you almost need to get out of the throttle to get it to shift into fourth when it is floored but it doesn't seem to downshift unneccesarily when accelarating between 30 and 50 mph and it seems to shift normally when driven easy or moderately
.
Any suggestions?
I also tested the transmission to see if it shifted as described above by c taylor. Mine is slightly different in that it will not shift out of first until I move the shift lever to S from L but it will shift to third without my moving the lever again and shifts to fourth when I move the lever to D. I am getting all four gears and your post helped me figure out what is going on. Thanks.+
It will out run my 6.2 diesel suburban now! (makes me wonder if I need to work on the suburban some)