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Step 2Let there be savings
Upon entering your vehicle you will most likely start the engine and shift into a gear and get onto the street. Your not running late so you think 40 mph will be a good cruising speed. What you will do is accelerate, firm and fast, until your vacuum gauge is somewhere between 10 and 4. Stay in that range until you reach 38 MPH, release the throttle and allow the vacuum gauge to travel back to, or close to, your idling pressure. By now you should have coasted to 40 MPH. You are going to want to maintain that speed. So, depending on your engine, find that sweet spot that is close to your idling speed, but also able to maintain 40 MPH. The key to this is finding the correct amount of throttle and then not moving the throttle at all, unless you need to stop.
If you managed to do all of the above without causing a ten car pileup, congratulations. However out in the distance, say 500 ft away, you see a light turning from a beautiful green to awful yellow. Using your sense of reasoning you realize that it will turn red before you reach it, meaning you'll have to (or should) stop. So what your going to want to do is release the throttle and shift into neutral, and coast right up to the red light. The same goes for stop signs. IF DRIVING AN AUTOMATIC BE CAREFUL NOT TO SHIFT INTO REVERSE you'll break your transmission
If you managed to do all of the above without causing a ten car pileup, congratulations. However out in the distance, say 500 ft away, you see a light turning from a beautiful green to awful yellow. Using your sense of reasoning you realize that it will turn red before you reach it, meaning you'll have to (or should) stop. So what your going to want to do is release the throttle and shift into neutral, and coast right up to the red light. The same goes for stop signs. IF DRIVING AN AUTOMATIC BE CAREFUL NOT TO SHIFT INTO REVERSE you'll break your transmission
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Do you have anything besides anecdotal evidence to share? If so, that's something that would add a lot to this discussion. If not, that's okay too.
Since owning the car for 80K miles, I have been putting it in neutral when going downhill on steep hills in order to save money on gas.
I figured that I could save some gas money and get higher MPG if I shifted my Automatic into neutral, and coasted downhill, and then shifted back into gear when I reached the bottom of the hill.
Needless to say, after doing this for 6 years or so, my transmission started to smoke and slip out of gear, and then it quickly and unexpectedly died in the middle of no where, to my shock and surprise!
Coasting downhill in neutral and then shifting back into gear destroyed my Torque converter, and so the entire transmission had to be replaced.
Take it from someone who knows better now- NEVER take your car out of gear for any reason. NEVER coast downhill to try to save money, because you won't.
In a silly attempt to save a few dollars on gas, I ended up spending a whopping $3500 dollars on a new transmission.
Spending $3500 dollars to save $10 doesn't make any sense, so take it from me- don't do it. Keep your transmission in gear at all times no matter what.
and can hit weaken the flywheel I personally haven't had a prob but just to forworn you
Reason is that as your car coasts in drive the computer turns off the fuel system and continues to run the car(climate control, alt, especially the power steering, ect.) using the forward motion of the car. if you switch into neutral then the car is still using gas to power these things. and as most people who know about mpg saving strategies know that if you idle for more then 10 seconds then its usually more efficient to turn your car off...well imagine either coasting using no gas for 10 seconds or coasting using whatever amount of gas needed for idle!