My husband keeps driving my automatic car the manual way.He thinks he is saving gas and saving the brakes (I need to change the brakes but can't do it for at least another month) My car is not manual so I don't think it will save me any gas, but what about my brakes? Thank you!
Is it bad to drive an automatic car the manual way?
Heheheheh...my wife gets annoyed with me when I use the manu-matic in my Mazda (alliteration FTW) too.
Except I usually only use mine to save gas. It doesn't go into 6th by itself until it's above 42mph. If I'm doing 40 on fairly level ground I click it over to the manual gate and drop it to 6th.
The only time I shift down with it in normal driving is when I have been in the mountains on a long downhill section
Is it bad to drive an automatic car the manual way?
Well you can shift it from the low gear to higher ones but its better to leave it in drive for the transmission and if you down shift like that its real bad while your moving its not the same as a manual transmission the inside is different.
Brakes are a lot cheaper than transmissions. I don't recommend what he is doing except under certain circumstances, such as going downhill.
Yeah if anything it uses more gas, their higher the rpms the more fuel needs to be injected.. theirs nothing that saves fuel.. if you wanna save fuel stay light on the pedal..
I would say he is not saving gas, most likely using more. Modern automatic transmissions are pretty efficient and smart. Some can actually learn your driving style to make things more efficient. Shifting one manually will confuse it so even when you drive it would be as efficient as it could be. As long as he is not driving aggressively he is probably not hurting the transmission. He may be saving a little on the brakes but not enough to make it worth the trouble in typical city traffic.
Bad? Maybe. Pointless? Absolutely.
Believe it or not your cars computer controlled transmission is smarter than your husband. It knows the perfect time to shift and will hit it with split-second precision. Make a mistake shifting manually and you could have a repair bill of several thousand dollars.
It's certainly not %26quot;bad%26quot; for the car, but I doubt he's saving much gas, if any.
If he's downshifting when he drives down steep hills, however, then, yes, it is giving the brakes a rest. In low gears, the wheels can only spin so quickly at a certain RPM, so by downshifting down hills you can delegate some of the braking to your engine instead of your brake pads. This safe driving technique is recommended for all long hills with all cars.
only on very steep hills would i downshift it that way other than that its a waste just wears out shifter parts and besides brakes around 150$ or trans 2000-3000$ unless he has money to burn tell him to knock it off its your car let him do it to his
