I want to post what I've been doing, and please tell me if you think my engine or tranny or anything else will blow up from these hypermiling aspects I've been trying with my Subaru Legacy:
If there's a big hill, I shift N, key off ICE, wait a second, then turn the key one notch so electronics come back on. I loose power steering which isn't a problem at speed, and power brakes which gets annoying when after a few pumps of power are used up. Where I drive there is sometimes big hills (I've been over 8 miles on a single coast, several over 3 miles is normal). When the speed goes too low I key on the ICE, rev a tiny bit (1-2k) and shift back into D. Without the rev it jumps a bit. So far this seems to help FE very well. I just jumped from 23mpg to 33mpg since I can coast for over 15% of my drive with the engine completely off. Is much gas saved by keying off the ICE? Would I be better to just stay in N?
An accident that occurs occassionally from this is that I key off but forgot to shift to nuetral and it jumps back on. That seems not good, but I think I've read that some people here were doing that to start their cars instead of using the key.
One annoying bit is that I hate turning the engine off at night because on my car the lights completely go out until I turn the key back for them. So if a car is coming and I want to power down, I have to flash them. [Edit: By that, I mean the lights are only out for a second] I don't think there's a way around that other than making some switch on the dash route power to the lights regardless of the engine on/off. I think that's fairly unique to Suby's. Anyone try that?
Any tips of hints or "holy-crap don't do that!"s will be accepted! Thanks.
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