vanguy

Interested to see if this is common and why. When you take your foot off the gas, my 99 RX300 instantly slows down like a manual down shifting. It has been like this since new. In every other automatic cars that I have driven, when you take your foot off the gas, the car just coast along. Does anybody have this experience and know why? Does this contribute to some of the transmission problems that we see on this board?

Thanks

salimshah

On an open road, shift to "N" and get a feel of the real drag. SUVs have much larger drag than other cars and that is why they have poor gas milage.

ps: It is illegal to coast without power from engine in many states.

Salim

Lil4X

Does thumbing the button on the shifter to engage/disengage the overdrive make a difference?

Meetya

Yeah, like they will ever figure whether you were coasting in neutral...

Meetya

Are you sure you have working overdrive (4rh gear)?

Lexmex

This happens to me on occasion, whether I am toying with the O/D button as I do on the track or not and/or just warming up, which can cause the effect of no coasting.

When I dropped off a friend the other day the Metro station, and sped off and then coasted up to the light I noticed it wasn't as smooth, but then again it was 85F degrees out. Sometimes when cooler I notice it coasts better or just after an ATF or more so after an oil change.

miniround

for me here in florida i use the a/c a lot. whenever I have the a/c on and i try to coast--i can't. as soon as i let off the gas the car just like stops haha. i leave OD on so its not just going down on 4th gear. but yea i have noticed that in the cooler months the car drives and coasts much better.

not sure if there's an explanation to blame on lexus' part as to why our rx's dont coast too well, but remember it is an suv with quite the drag coefficient haha.

Blkongray

From what I know, there is actually a sensor in the transmission that detects if the engine is performing properly. If the transmission senses that engine isn't performing as it should, it won't shift into O/D. With that said, I've noticed on mine that sometimes the tranny is 'slow' to detect that the engine is running well and it takes a few minutes after start up for the tranny to actually shift all the way into O/D and then 'coast' I let off the gas.

If you don't get the feel of 'coasting' when you let off the pedal, then thats a pretty good sign your tranny isn't going into O/D.