is this hurting my car?

zesty-man

zesty-man

how do ya like it?
hey guys, i wasnt sure if this was good for my car or not, so i figured i would ask you guys. basically when im driving and i come at a hill, i hit my car into netural and just sorta cruise along at a low rpm. then as im starting to slow down, i hit it back into drive and drive like how i drive regularly. so... is it bad that i switch to neutral on downwards hills etc and switch back into my auto transmittion again?
 
zesty don't mess with your tranny, one wrong move and you might throw it into a wrong gear. There isn't any big advantage, other than a VERY minor gas savings, which can be wasted if you gun it hard once or twice. I've been in a car that was in drive then park on a hill, not fun at all!
 
You should ALWAYS leave the auto trans in gear otherwise you are not TOTALLY in control of your car.

When you're coasting down a hill, so you should know that neutral coasting will allow you to free-wheel & pick-up a lot of speed. Foot-off-the-gas coasting in-gear will still allow for some compression braking & you're prepared to make a move if an animal (or child) jumps out in front of you.

As far as wear-n-tear on the trans, I'm not qualified to share my thoughts but I'm certain the owners manual would recommend neutral coasting is it was safe..... which it isn't.
 
wow! ive really hurt my transmittion then. ive experimented and done practically everything u could do wrong to my coopers automatic transmission. including putting it on neautral, and letting the shifttronic idle tooo long!
 
I don't think its that bad for the tranny. I know two of my friends(one has a 92 Camry the other 00 Focus) do that once in a while. It's kinda hard to go from Neutral to Reverse because you'd have to press the shifter button in, at least with their cars. I know you can just click Drive into Reverse without pressing the button or vice versa. I'm sure your BMW is set up in a similiar way. The thing i'd be worried about is when your just coasting that you don't have power, so if something did come up and you need a fast movement you'd have to shift it down to drive. I know i'm not trying to do it that much with my car, because its a little harder pushing the clutch while matching the rpms with the correct gear.
 
I am not too sure about where you guys live, but it is illegal to shift in to neutral while the vehicle is in motion where I live. You have less control, if you have to apply the gas for an emergency maneuver.
 
This is not a good thing at all!

Think of a cars automatic Transmission as a Human brain! There are many vessels and valves for which Transmission flows through (like blood to your brain) When you are driving and the transmission is shifting there are things that happen at different pressures inside the transmission. When you put your car in Neutal you are putting the Transmission at easy so its Fluid pressure is next to nothing (Or blood pressure) When you put it back into gear your pressure sky rockets and could cause a valve/ or a seal in the transmission to let go! Or like blowing a blood vessel somewhere in your brain! Either which way ..these both are pretty tragic things to happen!
 
A car shouldn't be in Neutral when it's moving unless you're shifting it yourself. Even then you should be in a gear of some sort whenever possible. Drive stick for a while and you'll figure out what trannys do not like, prefferably an older, cheaper manual car with a little bit of gear wear, just to amplify the effects.
 
JaCkaL829 said:
Nolan: What state do you live in that it's illegal?
Click to expand...

I don't know what state Nolan lives in, but I can tell you that coasting with the car not in gear is illegal here in Utah.

Joyriide- Since your Mini has that CVT transmission, I'm wondering if maybe
it would react differently to shifting in and out of drive than a regular automatic. I don't know much about them, but I thought I'd throw that out there in case someone here has some insight on CVTs.

Anyway, I've never been tempted to shift into neutral while driving an auto, because I always wanted to drive them like a stick, i.e. start in first, move to second, then to drive. It was a pretty lame practice. :wall I was a bored teenage driver...
 
If a car gains revs without accelerating and it's not a manual. It would have to be a pretty loud car. Even if it's not illegal it's really bad for the car.
 
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