Archives

Hey. i have a V4 toyota echo. 2000 automatic. I've heard that its wise to accelerate past the beginning gears from a dead stop rather than very slowly accelerating at first. In other words going from 0-20 RELATIVELY quickly rather than very slow. Which is it???

Relatively quickly. ATs are particularly inefficient until you go to up to a higher gear and steady speed where the car will lock the torque converter. For the Civic I know 2000-2500rpm is suggested.

However, I'm not sure what the best strategy is when driving at urban speeds where you'll end up in 2nd or 3rd without lock since the final target is still inefficient.

Our Saturn SL2 AT will reach lock-up at 35 mph. I usually accelerate at about 2,000 rpm's until it hits 3rd gear. Due to gearing and programming, I have to go to about 2,200 rpm's to reach 35 mph where I let off the gas (fake-shift) so it can shift to 4th and go into lock-up. With a very light foot, I can drop as low as 32 mph before losing lockup when on level terrain.

I think the key is your qualifier "relatively". Any owner's manual will recommend against jack rabbit starts, as they harm fuel economy. If you are between lights, no sense burning extra fuel to accelerate to 35 mph if you can ease up to the next red light at 25 mph.

Thanks for this thread, I was going to start the same type of thread.

I'm really new to this and now have a couple questions. How do I determine if the torque converter locks?

Also, I think I know the answer. When I end up having to stop at a light I notice that if I put it into Neutral I seem to be at ~800 rpm, but if I leave it in Drive, I tend to be at about ~600 rpm. Which should I do? I'm not comfortable with turning off at the lights quite yet.

Is it always more fuel efficient to be at a lower rpm?

You want to be at lower rpm (energy proportional to square of rpm?), but you want to be in a high gear.

So, it would appear that when stopped you want to be in drive, but maybe it's possible that in neutral it can spin the engine more easily? That's where a Scan/UltraGauge would come in handy, since you'd be able to try the two and check fuel consumption. What does it do in park?

In my car my GPH is at 0.33 GPH in gear stopped. In N it drops to 0.30. So sitting in N is slightly better. I don't think I've seen anyone else have different results. When in gear the engine has to push against the brakes, in N the engine is allowed to spin freely thereby needing less gas to keep from stalling.

I was wondering what GPH would be good for, but that would be a good use for it. I plan on getting a scan or ultra gauge, just not quite yet.

Thanks for the responses.