Drive to Neutral?

I have been switching to neutral when coasting down hills and shifting back into drive when I need to start accelerating again. I have noticed an increase in gas mileage if I do it. Are there any problems this could cause to my transmission??

I am no machanic here but I would think when you go from nuetral to drive it would be hard on the gears. If you would do this enough times I would think it would wear down the gears to the point of them being almost smooth. Maybe someone with a little more knowledge will chime in.

Eric

yea, I probably wouldn’t recommend this, as I’m assuming you are doing this on an automatic transmission?

For a stick, it is no big deal, other than you will gain a little pre-mature clutch wear.

However, for an automatic, you are creating exessive wear and torque on your torque converter and your clutch bands.

Even though it isn’t quite as harsh, imagine taking your car, reving it up to 2000rpms, and putting it in drive. Doing this once or twice won’t hurt it. However over time it will create pre-mature wear.

Another factor is that all that shifting you are doing is going to wear down the bushings/seals in your shifter linkage as well.

My opinion is that you are creating too much torque on your clutch packs that you shouldn’t do this.

Thanks…that’s was my thinking as well…just wanted to make sure.

Then again, at today’s gas prices you might save enough to come out ahead on a new tranny!

I don’t think it would hurt the tranny. Torque converters don’t engage until about 100-1200 rpms. If you have the engine in neutral and shift back into gear you have your foot off the gas and the rpms are about 600 therefore it shouldn’t hurt the tranny.
That being with todays lock up trannys there should not be a negligible difference in mileage doing this because the tranny is supposed to unlock (basically go into neutral) when you let off the gas. This is why when you let off the gas on the highway the rpms go down but the vehicle seems to coast rather than slow down dramatically. This is assuming you have a newer overdrive type tranny.
My two cents.

On top of the wear it causes, it is also dangerous and perhaps even illegal due to the fact that you are not completely “in control” of your vehicle. Often times braking is required, but other times accelerating is neccessary to avoid an accident or mishap. I wouldn’t suggest you continue this type of driving, although I can’t argue with your motivation behind it….these gas prices are getting ridiculous!

I would be more conserned with missing nuetral and hitting reverse .Iam no mech but Iam thinking that wouldnt be good.

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I would be more conserned with missing nuetral and hitting reverse .Iam no mech but Iam thinking that wouldnt be good.

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Tony;
Are you saying you never did a “reverse drop” in your car in high school??? Where you are going about 50mph, throw the old cutlass or regal in reverse and hammer the gas???? You get a burn-out about 200 feet!

Lenny;
That is my concern on this, because the torque converter never fully disengages when you let off the gas to go down a hill. So, when you manually disengage the torque converter, then manually engage it again, I would beleive that is where the premature wear would come from.