help me get home
 

my drive to work is typically very good oportunity for hypermilling , its very early(5:30ish am) , little traffic , and the lights are timed perfectly .. basically i hit one red light (2 max) then if i keep a speed less than 45 i can get to work without coming to a complette stop.. (aprox 8 mile drive)

the way back is a different story.. its rush hour.. if i take back the same route there is alot more traffic , making it very hard not to constantly hit the brakes and the lights are timed differnetly , when one turns green the next will turn red etc..

so i typically take a differnet way home .. local streets a bit of zig zagging .. not as many red lights but instead plenty of stop signs..no where near as much traffic so i dont feel the pressure of going faster than i want..

I think this is the one that will be more efficient as far as mpg's go..(i will know for sure once i get a hold of a SCII)

i'm new at this and trying to find a method that works for me.

I've been doing alot of reading here the last couple of days..i've learned that my yaris will cut fuel once i let go of the accelartor..but i also read that usuaally at about 1100 rpms it starts burning about the same fuel as when in idle (if someone can confirm that to be true that would be great, because the rest of this thread is based on that belief).
So, on my way home there isnt much space for getting into higher gears. . what i find happening is that it will go into 3rd .. but very soon after its time to lett off the gas..so i do..then i feel the engine breaking but its very minimal since it was bearly into 3rd.. then it just stays at about 1000rpms or often a bit under (so i assume fuel cut has stopped at this point?) for a bit longer than i think it should..same for 2nd gear.. .
so the question here is .. is it safe (for the transmission) for me to manually change gears down to get it back into that engine breaking state?

or is it "engine breaking" regardles if i feel it or not?

Would it help Mpg's to do this?

or have i completely misunderstood what i've been reading about decelaration.

I had a Scion Xb but it was manual trans, so I can't offer anything but my Duramax with the Allison trans doesn't like being put into neutral for coasting. Its a learning trans and is constantly looking at how to increase mpg's. Shifting in and out gear results in worse mpg's.

sounds more like a trans with a learning disability :)

It might be better suited to a short bus! If you drive 200 miles a certain way it adjusts all the shift points, when you put some boost to it, maybe to smoke a mustang, it shifts a lil different for a few miles :)

you should always feel engine braking. if you do not want shifting asll the time, keep it in second.

today the little car 3 speeds auto used to be 3 speeds auto and gigantic v8s...of course in the v8 realm, it is torture. the little cars can thrash around easy in the city.
just do what the older cars did...some even had shift kits

Hold on a second here...

Shouldn't we be asking him to see if there is a difference between manual shifting his tranny versus automatic shifting?

You live smack in the middle of one of the most extensive transit systems in the world, and you drive 8 miles to work. That wouldn't stop me from helping you improve your drive when you absolutely have to do it, but just think about that for a second. Don't you have some reading you could do on the bus/train? Down there you probably could even bike there faster than you could drive...

Orangeboy is right. I had a 40 mile commute into San Francisco for 7 years, and never drove to work in my car - not even once.

I am sure he has a good reason, maybe he is required to carry equipment back and forth to work.

I will say that I used to walk to my programming job... only after realizing that after 5 years of working there that I could! :(

I'm not orange, I'm Wonderous :p

This is a good point. I had to do this for my previous job - no choice. I'm not trying to be (too) critical if he indeed could walk or bike, I just advocate considering alternatives, because as you say, you went 5 years before thinking "huh... why am I not walking to work?". Just bringing that perspective to the table before we even start talking about driving styles/mods - seems like its a bit higher on the flowchart. (Do you need to drive? Y/N)