2000ES300

Im convinced that driving under 60 miles an hour with the overdrive off makes the car drive soo much better. Also I switch into neutral at stops and I feel like it helps the car as well.

Any others feel this way?

LXMN

I put my car in "D" and leave it at that. If I want to drive a stickshift, I would just start up my prelude and get busy with the gears.

Rollin'ES3

isnt turning the OD off, like cutting off the final gear? i thought OD was our 4th gear, or am i wrong? Wheres Phoenix when u need em....lol

smokesgtp

Yes it's the 4th gear. Your gonna kill your mileage unless you do all your driving under 30 or so which i highly doubt. It seems smoother because the car is making less shifts simple as that. The torque converter will still lock up in third i believe so it still may feel like 4 shifts anyway if your observant. me? I am firmly convinced I watch the tach more than the speedo lol. I miss a good manual. In a hilly area however it can be quite useful to avoid momentum killing upshifts into overdrive, then an abrupt downshift.

2000ES300

I do own a manual vehicle as well, but I was more concerned that this is a problem, or if it is normal for the car to drive better with it off at those speeds.

This will not hurt the engine, except for gas milage righ?

AzNMpower

At 60mph with OD off, it's about 3000-3250rpm in 3rd so it's not terribly harmful. Not great for fuel econ, as mentioned above.

Two bit

People know way too much. lol

Lexmex

Unless you are at the track (and even that does not always work) or going up a hill, leave the O/D on.

2000ES300

Alright, I will continue to drive with terrible gas milage as long as the car is not being hurt.

Thanks for your time guys !

dallison

i typically take the od off when i am trying to brake since my brakes are startig to shake a tiny bit. or i will use it to slow a little on the highway w/o showing brake lights

EMoraga

ditto ... I also use it to manually downshift when I plan on passing someone, of course.

-Erich

Slooooooow

iTrader: (1)

There is the potential for premature transmission wear and tear. Check it:

Cdratz

If lexus, (who are smarter than any of us) thought it was a good idea to drive with O/D off then the button would be to turn on. 4 gears are essential. I use the O/D when I am on the highway to shift to pass someone or, when I am exiting to help w/ braking. Any other use is futile. Think about it why would you want your engine to have to work twice as hard all the time? It is unneeded wear and tear due to unneeded high RPM's.

Two things about dropping it to neutral... your tranny was built to downshift if you "manually" downshift it is like 4 more processes that are unneed. It is a lot harder on the torque converter. (as opposed to a manual which has a flywheel, and clutch, which are built to do this)

If your wheels are going at 60MPH but you engine is in neutral what are the implications? A whole bunch of things are spinning at 60 MPH and your engine is spinning at idle speed, what happens when things of different speed touch eachother? Wear and tear, gnashing, grinding, all of the words that you don't want to do to your car. Your oil pressure is lower. A whole bunch of things.

On these newer cars, when you are on the brake coming to a stop your engine hardly uses any gas, so you are not saving gas by being in neutral.

Really the important thing is that Lexus designed all of this stuff so why try to use it for something it wasn't designed for. It's like using a broom for a shovel because it doesn't hurt your hands as much, but the broom does a crappy job and will break a whole lot quicker.

Now that you know the implications you can choose what you want, if you like how it feels then do it, it's really your choice.

Toronto

It would be a wonderful language (and the Internet a better place) if it were easier to signify "golly... just guessing here." But it wouldn't be the old Internet if we couldn't boast anonymously, shoot from the hip, etc.

Having said that.... sounds like the difference between driving a Caddy and driving, say, a bike. Sure, a 3 liter engine can loaf while chugging along at 40 mph in overdrive; likewise it can collect a whole lot of carbon and crap without much obvious loss of performance; and nobody knows if the crankshaft and bearings are complaining when you lug this v6. But that's not its sweet-range or where the engineers peaked the breathing.

My custom with a nice double-overhead cam 4-valve engine is to keep it in the right rev range, even for a luxury car. True, I let it go below 2800 rpm, but over is better. So I lock out overdrive except on the highway and even lock out 3rd except on faster city streets.

The engine likes that, I'd guess (just guessing since I haven't learned what is the best rev range). Does anybody have real gas consumption numbers for the gears? It is true that the friction effort (pumping losses) is more when spinning faster, but then the engine runs on a leaner mixture when up in the sweet-range.

The downside is prolly things like timing belt wear which is, I guess, simply a function of revs. And my belt is going on 150,000 km/100,000 miles. Not sure gas consumption is up.

Don't lug your engine.

92ES5sp

Ben, you should think about at least inspecting your timing belt.
The more constant you keep your speed, the better your MPG #s will be. Leave your O/D on and let the pcm do the work for you. It knows what its doing. And if you do decide to drive arounf in 2nd or 3rd all day, you tranny fluid should get more frequent attention.

Edit: carbon buildup will cause an obvious loss of performace for these cars. And theyll ping like a ***** too.