Does going into neutral wear down tranny?

[DifferentPointofView]

yeah, the detent pretty much won't wear out until you have about a million miles on it. it'll have some play if you have over 120 miles, but it's not excessive in any way. Your car will probably go out way before the detent does, unless your like my friend in his camero, where he'd shift gears without even pressing in the button, and shift like ramming it into 2nd to D would make it go faster.

[DifferentPointofView]

check your owners manual, I would say the section on towing the car in neutral, because it's going to tell you how fast you should have it going out of gear, as some tell you not to tow over 30mph with the drive wheels on the ground.

Mine says that if it's a 2wd (it is) and 4wd you can have the whole car on the ground in neutral going any speed.

[Who]

I can actually feel mine downshift while in neutral if the speed falls below certain points.

[no_roads]

I work part time in an auto shop and I've seen people come in that say that they are trying to save gas so they will actually shift the vehicle into neutral while coasting down a hill and then shift it back into drive later thus resulting in burning up the tranny alot faster. The reason it burns the tranny up faster is because of the synchro's in it for each gear and it's basically easier to put it like this, you wouldn't put a car into first gear(on a manual/stick shift) at 60 mph would you? Which is exactly what you are doing when you have an automatic, your tansmission thinks it is starting from a stop so naturally it uses first gear then it has to react extremely quickly because it pretty much was just slapped in the face and told to do something. The basic answer if you for some reason didn't understand my explanation is that it is really, really bad to do that and it really doesn't save you that much gas/fuel to constitute paying to either buy a new tranny or rebuild the one that you have.

[roflwaffle]

Originally Posted by no_roads

Which is exactly what you are doing when you have an automatic, your tansmission thinks it is starting from a stop so naturally it uses first gear then it has to react extremely quickly because it pretty much was just slapped in the face and told to do something.

Depends on the trans I suppose, although I've never heard of that. My autotragic goes into a gear higher than what it would normally be at depending on how fast I'm going, and then drops into the appropriate gear, so if I'm going fast enough it just goes into fourth. No going first to fourth at 60mph here.

[LostCause]

Automatic transmissions are a major gray area in my mind, but I don't recall them having synchros. I suppose transmissions differ, but I thought they were two planetary gearsets attached in opposite directions. Fluid logic controls different clutches (based on oil pressure) that lock sun gears, ring gears, planet gears, etc. based on the desire gear. I always thought synchros were cone clutches in manual transmissions designed to rev match gears to ease shifting. If synchros exist in AT's I'd love to know...make that black box a little more transparent. If I ever find the engineer who first devised the modern automatic transmission I'm going to sit and look with awe .

I haven't tried shifting into neutral yet. I don't want to risk damaging my only form of transportation . Someday I'll get the cajones.

- LostCause

[s2man]

My 3T40 (formerly th125) goes right back into third gear when I shift from N to d on the highway. Then the TC locks up withing one second. The only time there is a bump or jerk is if the engine N rpm is too far off from D rpm (ie coasting > 55mph). But a simple blip of the throttle gets the engine close to driving rpm before I put it back in D. Blipping the throttle has become second nature, and N coasting is jerkless (except for the driver ).

[no_roads]

Mainly the transmissions I've seen are from Honda's that went bad at around 50,000 to 95,000 miles on them. So maybe it depends on the vehicles?

[ankit]

Originally Posted by no_roads

Mainly the transmissions I've seen are from Honda's that went bad at around 50,000 to 95,000 miles on them. So maybe it depends on the vehicles?

Well from what I've heard, some of the V6 honda transmissions were really weak and had premature failures. But this is just what I had read on another forum so I don't know how true that is.

[Whoops]

[/QUOTE]I don't know why, and I don't know how come, but I slow down when I put it into neutral. If I'm going 55 at the top of a hill, at the bottom I will be going over 65 while in gear, but only hit 60 while in neutral. Both tests I have done on the same hill. It makes me wonder whether my engine uses the same amount of fuel whether it's in neutral or in gear [/QUOTE]

This is not your imagination. I think the cause of this is something that the car manufacturer is doing, that he's not telling about. I have a similar phenomenon on a Chrysler Town & Country Minivan. I think that what they do is to open the throttle, or something, just a little bit, so that the car appears to coast farther when you have your foot off of the gas pedal. My feeling is that they are trying to give folks the impression that the car coasts a lot farther, so obviously it must be doing that because of the phenomenal increase in the new aerodynamic shape.

The really bunk down side to this is that the engine holding power, coming down a hill, with a trailer on, absolutely is terrible. Consequently, I have to use the brakes more frequently, to keep from picking up to much speed.

I have seen a controller that you can purchase, which replaces the original controller, as I recall. It allows you to put the car into a gear and then once you blip the gas, so the engine rpm matches the right number, for the gear and speed selected, it will shift into that gear, from 4th, which is where it starts out. Once it goes into gear, it stays in gear, instead of upshifting and all of the other frustrating things the factory controller uses.