Have you thought of what the clutch's function is in a A/T if the car is neutral and is shifted back to a forward gear at idle rpms while driving at 80 mph which will probably require the rpms to be somewhere at 2500?

 

Heh, yeah if I do that on the Bird at 80, it seems to skip overdrive, and go down one more and you get an abrupt downshift. not that i do this all the time.

And I have to press the button to take outta drive to neutral on it.
no button required to remove from drive seems a little scary.
have had passengers in other cars bump it with there knee or something while cruisin and rev'd the heck outta the engine before driver realized what happened.

ok Im bored at work and rambling.....

 

ok
so it isn't the shifting to neutral that hurts it, it would hurt it if you shift back to drive while moving. that makes sense.
thanks

 

I sometimes put it into Nuetral in my Civic when coasting down hills, but ive never thrown it into Reverse. But who cares mines a Civic, be careful with that GT

 

If you were to read the owners manual, it would state that you should not shift the automatic transmission while driving the vehicle. There may be sitations where you might want to move to a lower FORWARD gear, however, I see absolutely no reason to move that thing up instead of down. Neutral or reverse are not options while traveling in a forward direction at speed. Any driving instructor worth their paycheck will tell you not to touch the automatic shifter 99% of the time while driving.

If you want to play with something while driving, you should've bought a 5 speed. If you keep putting that thing in reverse at speed, you'll blow the crap out of that trans and Ford will know. They'll tell you it was abuse and ask you for $1,500 for a new trans.

 

The best thing to do is to keep doing it. This time go the full 100 MPH and Slam it into reverse....then and right then, let go of the steering wheel.

If you survive, I bet you will break the habit...

 

Ah, just when I thought 'E' tickets were no longer available!

 

This is the oddest thread I think I've read since joining TMS. The "Why" of this behaviour is baffling to me. It seems utterly pointless, and obviously potentially damaging to a new car.

I have to agree with several of the other posters, if you need something to fiddle with while driving, a manual would have been the way to go. In lieu of that, how about doing something harmless like changing the radio stations or adjusting the sun visors to alleviate boredom? Much safer for the car than this sort of stuff.

 

The only thing that comes to my mind when I read the original post is
"why?"

 

Hope you aren't doing that to save gas because its just dumb IMO.

 

Downhill off throttle speed record? :bang:

 

Give the guy a break....he made a mistake and now won't do it again.


To answer the "why" question: because he didn't know it was bad and enjoys the feeling of control while still being able to drive an auto.

 

Exactly! Stop beating the guy down, there's no point in that. He's admitted his mistake, and was just looking for advice. There's really no reason to be an a-hole, now is there?

Ford needs to equip the Mustang with a manumatic....maybe they were just trying to save a few bucks, who knows.