Alright so I noticed my friend shifting to neutral in his auto IS300 to a rolling stop at a stop light. I asked him why he did this and he said that it was good for the engine and it saved gas during idle. Is there any truth to this? I tried it in my Auto tC but it felt likt my engine was about to shut off when I was nearing the stop at a stoplight.

 

doubt you will save alot of gas doing that. if anything, you will put more wear on the gears, don't bother.

 

it won't hurt any thing...

just leave it in gear that way you won't forget to put it back into gear after you put it neutral

 

it shouldnt do anything worse to the transmission, however, i my auto, i try to shift as little as possible because i do not trust automatic transmissions. it wont be saving him any gas either, if anything, he would be doing it so he can let the brakes cool off at red lights. If youre in neutral theres no reason for those pads to lock onto the rotor.

 

It won't do anything except add 25,000 more shifts from drive into neutral over the life of the car......

 

True about adding shifts- But it is also adds wear and tear on the throwout bearing when the clutch is depressed all the time. A throwout bearing only costs $7 bucks but is a high labor item and is replaced when the clutch is......

 

he has an automatc, there is no clutch...

 

it should add more life the transmission because nothings engaged which means no friction. IMO

 

constant engaging and disengaging will actually lower the life of the transmission.

 

an automatic was meant to be kept in D, not switched to neutral and back to D. some cars, actually alot of cars even have a safety that makes you hit the brake whenever you go to switch it into neutral.
it's an automatic, if you wanted to drive it like that, you should have gotten a manual.
you won't see any difference in gas mileage

 

Every time your transmission shifts from nuetral to drive there is a combination of valves that stroke, solenoids that engage and clutches and or bands that apply. All your friend is doing is wearing these components. If anything it will burn more gas. Engine RPM increases in park and nuetral. Sure there is less load, but I think the extra RPM makes up for the lack of load.

 

^^ werd

 

you have to brake harder when coning to a complete stop with an automatic. i

had an 86 celica that i did that the shifting to neutral part for 250,000 miles and i didnt have to replace nothing in the drivetrain so please tell how that happened. you wont notice a difference in gas but youll notice the difference in brake life. i can personal vouch for that because when i owned that car i did 85% of my driving in the city.

but the tc is no celica so i say dont do it!!

 

and guys... you use a lot of fuel when your in idle... not so much because of much except that your air to fuel mix is poor to rich... (running rich),,, I used to do that when I used to drive autos... nothing happened... got to 42000 miles of doing that... anyways... his deal

 

Break pads are cheap...

 

thats right, brake pads and rotors are much cheaper than transmissions.

 

You only need rotors if you don't replace your pads!

Scott

 

well thats not completely true, rotors eventually warp over time from consistent heating up and cooling down and heating up again.

 

I did this all the time in my old 240sx auto, and the tranny definitely went to hell after many miles. I don't know if that's why but I'm sure it didn't help -

Anyone know if this is OK to do with a manual? I figure you are basically disengaging it anyway, and it bothers me holding in the clutch sometimes for 2.5 minutes at these ridiculous lights where I live. I usually throw it into N as I approach a red light and coast/brake, then switch to 1st when I am rdy to go. Once again, that's for a manual.

 

You know what I meant!
Of course, they'll wear out eventually, but in the context of the thread...