Long term effects of pulse and glide in an automatic
 

Hey Ecomodders! Wow I didn't realize its been over four years since I've been on here. I just wanted to pop in and give some long term effects of pulse and glide in an automatic. Well long story short my transmission went out. Now the car had 256k when it went out which is a lot of miles for most cars but this is in a 99 Camry so it could be argued that it should have made it well past 300k with routine maintenance, In any regard I wouldn't change a thing if I could go back. To give more details my car had just under 100k when I started P&G. I did it pretty hardcore for a few years then scaled back a bit. Without P&G I would have never achieved 50+ MPG (908 miles on one tank) sadly I will never get those numbers again but that's okay! I'm still in the mid to high 30's on the highway. Hitting 40mpg here and there.

I want to add the total repair for my transmission was only about $625 so I certainly saved more than that in gas over the years I did P&G. The car now has 262k miles and runs like a top.

I'd also like to add my SGII is still working like a clock almost 8 years later!

With all those miles on it, I'd say your experience shows that P&G likely wasn't hard on that automatic tranny.

Congratulations!

Sounds like to me you don't know how lucky you are. :P

None of what you just typed sounds bad. lol

How do you pulse and glide in your particular car ?
Do you shift into neutral while driving along, and then shut off your engine ?
( I never do this )
I will drive at 50 mph or so, I shift into Neutral and coast.
The car goes down in speed quite fast, and at under 45 it shudders and revs suddenly when I shift back into Drive.

I rarely ( hardly ever ! ) coast any more out of fear of damaging the transmission.

Btw
I was surprised to see that the car seems to coast slowly when going downhill.
I never knew about how an automatic transmission drags on a car when going downhill untill i read about it on EM.

Are you doing engine on or off? Do you rev match before shifting back into D? What happened to the transmission?

Sounds like a complete win! Congrats!
Did the mechanic give you any print out with specifics about the part that failed?
This evidence could be posted with the 100+ Hypermiling Tips as proof that it really doesn't hurt to shift into neutral at speed.