Quote:
Originally Posted by pasadena_commut
Stupid move. Maybe you saved a buck on gas but it damn well wasn't worth the risk. I have driven the Grapevine at least 50 times each direction. Sure, often one can coast down into the central valley and never even tap the brakes. However, bad things happen really fast on that stretch of road, and with a mountain on one side and a cliff on the other, whatever else happens on that grade, getting off the road is not an option. Stomping the brakes may not get you out of trouble, sometimes the only way out is to punch the gas (and pray). Example, the semi merging blindly into your lane from the right while there is traffic on your left and another car behind you. Even stomping the brakes may not work as well as you think when you're doing 70MPH down that grade and find you need to come to a complete stop. Once the boost goes, is your leg strong enough to stop your car under those conditions?
Besides being dangerous (when a bad situation presents) it is also likely pointless. Many cars, your's probably included, won't burn a bit of gas on those steep downgrades - the injectors will shut off. Heaven forbid that anybody would put it in neutral on such a road, as the engine braking will keep the car near the speed limit without burning out the brakes.
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Having driven that a couple hundred times myself, I'm pretty comfortable with it. I only keyed off during the more gentle downhill portions, and I did refire it once I got to the final steep decline where I needed the engine braking.
As to the injector shutoff, that's fine if you need the engine braking, but there were several very gentle declines (especially between Gorman and Lebec) where leaving it in gear would rob me of momentum and consume more gas as I pushed the pedal to maintain the speed limit. Likewise on the return trip, between Frazier Park and pretty much Santa Clarita, I was able to leave the key off. No traffic to speak of, and the decline is so gentle that I would have been on the gas the whole time had it been in any gear.