During my daily commute I have to go down several blocks with a STOP at each intersection.

Which is better for the car: To just stay in 2nd reaching about 3,000+ RPM before braking or to just shift into 3rd for the few seconds?

 

Unless you have enough distance before your stop to actually get some USE out of 3rd gear my advice would be to just rev out 2nd to maybe 5k or so to gain some momentum, then just throw it into neutral and coast until you're ready to apply your brakes, which should be pretty close already. Let your brakes stop the car, not the transmission.

There's probably nothing wrong with upshifting either. I guess you could vary the technique between stops. Anyway that's my take, hope it was useful...

 

Shifting your vehicle into "Neutral" is not a good thing. When you are "Free Wheeling" you will have no control over the vehicle in case of an emergency. If you want you can keep the car in gear and depress the clutch and coast if desired, however, leaving it in gear and allowing the vehicle to slow does no harm to the clutch or transmission.

Downshifting (in my experience) does no harm. What you want to do is match your road speed and RPM's. Clutch in, a little accelerator, clutch out, allow vehicle to slow.

One man's opinion.

 

True, but coasting with the clutch depressed would also be riding the clutch; for example coasting through an entire turn with the clutch depressed rather than just riding a gear through the turn.

Typically, I won't go into neutral until I'm already applying the brakes anyhow, so that it's already no question that all I want to do is stop. So yeah don't go coasting for several of blocks in neutral, no. lol

But yeah as devildogg has stated if you have your gears vs speed figured out on your vehicle then you can match revs as you slowdown and downshift gear by gear.


To try and return to the original question though, I'd say if you were more than maybe say 1-2 blocks away from your planned stop, go ahead and upshift. Less than that just ride the gear. Whatever you feel good with really.

Peace

 

Use Second for momentum and shift to neutral for the stop.

 

I never down shift really,..I will Heel toe all the time when I'm really fast though,.takin turns
Even w/ Rev matching(which is what I do all the time),..The tranny(more so the clutch) takes abuse down shifting(espically slammin like 5th to 3rd really hard)that can't be good repeadidly(spell)---as far as slowing down,..granted when in the rain or snow,.its what your supposed to do, put in Neutral.

I'd rather Wear out the brakes the the TRanny espically w/ all the tranny problems,...whats funny is My Tranny is SUPER,..no problems except the noise,..but I'm told by others that is cuz the tranny is so tight!??

but then again I'm no mechanic but I try to put myself in the trannys "Shoes",.. ,..that would hurt me!