Automatics changing my view.

[8$PG]

I've always liked automatic better. All of my cars have been automatic with one exception for about a month. The reason is that I like controlling what the car should be doing rather than how the mechanics inside should do it. Where I live manual is alot more common because of tradition mostly but the new modern automatics are increasing in numbers.

The mileage I get with my Honda Accord -03 is about 30MPG driving 90% at 66MPH GPS-speed and 10% city traffic. Keeping it always below 60 on country roads my record is 42MPG or 5.6L/100km on a single trip of 360km. Almost no braking or rev-ing above 2500rpm.

I have just ordered scangaugee to play with since my car isn't equipped with a trip computer. Done some testing with an OBD2-cable but coudn't find a nice enough program to use, and I was curious about the open-loop/closed loop parameter incorporated in a mpg-calculation.

What I find most interesting about my car is how the transmission shifts when letting the foot off the gas. It goes from 5-4-3 with lockup still engaged and fuel system in open-loop mode engine braking and then on 3:rd gear at about 15mph it disengages at 1000rpm and then it starts to coast with the torque-converter slightly pulling in second and 1:st until you have to use the brakes to come to a complete stop. So you could in effect use the car with no gas consumed from highway speed to 15mph with a slight engine braking at fairly low revs. I wanted to se how this affects the mpg calculation while driving and how to use that in the most efficient way to save fuel.

If it would be to alternate between enginebrake and some more gas when going downhill on a highway i.e. and so on.

This is almost the opposite from how my previous car (an old Lexus LS) worked letting of the gas it would almost continue at the same speed as before when driving 30mph or less. It had an older 4-speed with lock-up only when in overdrive.