Generally speaking, when is it a good idea to manually shift an automatic transmission?

Generally speaking, when is it a good idea to manually shift an automatic transmission?

if you're going down a steep, long hill

otherwise don't.

When road has really poor grip, like black ice under snow, you should use "ice"/"winter" mode to manually force gearbox to use 2ND gear instead of 1St.

Or downshift before overtake if you have shitty automatic that takes ages to shift gears.

This

>if you're going down a steep, long hill

Not then either. Killed two autos doing that, and had a third on the way out before I got rid of it.

Just let it shift normally all the time.

...

we gave you an answer
now give us MOAR pics

Ya and fuck up your brakes and/or spin out?

>Or downshift before overtake if you have shitty automatic that takes ages to shift gears.
My Grand Marquis takes roughly seven years to shift gears (like every non-P71 Panther) but it's explicitly listed in the manual that if you stomp the pedal all the way down the car will automatically downshift for you without having to disable overdrive/drop down a gear.

I do it for engine breaking e.g. when going down steep hills

What's more expensive, pads and rotors or a transmission? I'd rather do the pads and rotors, but that's just me I guess.

Downshifting in low grip conditions in literally any drivetrain configuration will make you far more likely to spin out than just putting it in neutral and using the brakes. If you haven't realized that by now, you need to do some more driving in snow with summers.

if you're going down a big mountain (I live near Eisenhower tunnel), the odds that you are going to boil your fluid and overheat your brakes doing so is very likely.

I live on the east coast and use decent fluid. None of the mountains here are big enough to boil it. Fade yes, boil, no. And even then only at speed in clear weather.

Creeping along at 20 MPH over 6 inches of powder on the way home at 2 A.M., it's pretty unlikely you'll be putting enough heat into the brakes to boil the fluid.

So you don´t drive down a long steep hill anyway.

yeah coming down from the tunnel is miles and miles of a 7% downgrade. that'll fuck up your brakes something fierce

Maybe like 8 miles of hill or so at a time, 6-15% grade depending on where I am on the hill. Not the same as the hills out west, but still a fair hill.

It´s more about the speed and slope than about the distance.
Also engine braking shouldn´t hurt your transmission more than normal use does.

It certainly seemed to hurt the ones I had more than normal use. I'm guessing because it was a higher load/RPM than what it was designed to constantly handle. Could have just been shit cars though.

Also killed a throw out bearing in a manual transmission by engine braking once. The clutch was like 2 weeks old, after a week of engine braking down 10% grades at 4500 RPM, the bearing started squealing.

You never know, maybe I'm just abnormally rough on transmissions and I don't realize it. I've managed to kill four of them after all.

>Killed two autos doing that, and had a third on the way out before I got rid of it.
Manually holding gear down a hill isn't what killed your autos you retarded moron.

Never.

P sure it is. Didn't abuse them otherwise.

In my 6 speed at I have only found one scenario aside from gentle deceleration for a light. I have a highway exit to the start of another highway on my daily commute. The far right lane on the highway I am leaving exits and normally turns into a cluster fuck stop and go for a mile before the new highway starts and the new highway, my exit, swoops up from the city and is an on ramp for those seeking the highway I am getting off or getting on.

The inner right lane of my origin highway averages about thirty with some fairly infrequent fluctuations of +/- 15mph. I start in the inner left lane 1.5 miles out and leave it in full auto. About .75 out I move to the inner right lane after the first instance of bunching is observed and at 35-40 my transmission wants to stay 4there or 5th (for that fuel economy)and when jumping down to second it can be slow, expecially for 5->2 shifts so here I select 3Rd gear and the revs are in the low 2k rpm. Depending on that day's action I downshift as necessary and lane change to avoid cluster fuck and merge without having to slow to a crawl or worse yet go into stop'n'go mode unnecessarily.

>What's more expensive, pads and rotors or a transmission?
This is the dumbest shit that's constantly brought up, usually by people who have no idea how to operate a gearbox or have no idea how the gearbox in question operates.
Avoid it shifting under excessive load repetitively (manually or automatically, either up or down) and engine breaking will not cut your gearbox life short.

>P sure it is
it isn't. What exactly was "killed" with your two autos in question?

>nailed it

+1

Some cunt always brings that argument up in the "downshifting with manuél" argument too.

What the FUCK is this faggot trying to say?

Tl;Dr gearing and power train programming can force it upon you in dynamic situation

what do you guys mean by manually shifting it?

Are you 12 or what?

i just put gas in and go man please spoon feed me

Exactly. As long as you don't force it to downshift to red line it should be ok to engine break. The torque converter takes most of the load anyway, and its a fluid coupling so they don't tend to wear easily. The only thing that'll happen is the tranny fluid temps will go up.

Even with junk boxes you can put the car into lower gear ie 3, 2 and L. What this does is just force to car to not shift into the gears above the chosen number.

Why didn't you just Google it instead of looking like a moron? You trying to piss me off faggot?