Figuring Out This Whole “Engine Braking Automatic” Business
So, I’ve been messing around with this idea of “engine braking automatic” for a while now. You hear about it in new cars, right? Fancy computers doing all the work, supposedly. But let me tell you, getting my head around it, especially with my slightly older automatic, was a bit of a journey. It wasn’t like I just flipped a switch and boom, perfect engine braking.
It all kicked off ’cause I was getting properly fed up with standing on the brakes all the time. You know the drill, heading down a long, steep hill, and your foot’s practically welded to the brake pedal. Your leg starts aching, and you just know those brakes are cooking. I kept thinking back to my old manual car – piece of cake, that was. Just knock it down a gear or two, and let the engine take the strain. But my current automatic? Nah, it just wanted to freewheel and make my right foot do all the hard graft. Seriously frustrating.
First thing I did, I tried to get a grip on what these newer cars are actually up to. Seemed like some kind of dark art. They bang on about “grade logic” and all sorts of clever stuff. Sounded dead complicated, and to be honest, a bit like witchcraft to me. My car, well, it’s got your basic ‘D’, then ‘3’, ‘2’, and ‘L’. That’s about as “logical” as it gets. So, I started having a proper go with those. Shifting it down into ‘2’ or even ‘L’ when I was on a downhill slope.
And, well, it kind of did the job. The engine revs would pick up, and I’d feel a bit of that engine braking. But it wasn’t exactly smooth sailing. Sometimes it’d give a bit of a jolt, or the revs would scream a bit too high for my liking, or sometimes not high enough to do much good. Felt more like I was wrestling with the car than actually driving it properly. I wanted it to be, well, automatic, without me having to constantly faff about with the gear stick like I was trying to stir a massive pot of stew.
My “Practice” – Or How I Tried to Make It Work For Me
This is where my “practice” really got going. I wasn’t about to start pulling the gearbox apart or trying to hack into the car’s brain – that’s miles above what I can do, and let’s be honest, I’d probably just end up breaking something expensive.
So, my practice turned into me being the “automatic” part of the system. Here’s what I got up to:
- Watching and Learning: I really started to pay attention to what the car was doing. How fast was I actually going? How steep was this hill really? What happened when I shifted down at different speeds, or with different amounts of throttle? It was a lot of just trying things out, seeing what worked and what didn’t.
- Thinking Ahead: This was a big one. Instead of waiting till I was halfway down the hill and already stamping on the brakes, I started shifting down before the descent really got going. Get the car settled in the right gear early doors.
- Using My Ears: You can tell a surprising amount just by the sound of the engine. If it’s whining its head off, you’re probably in too low a gear for that speed. Not feeling much braking? Maybe try knocking it down another one. It’s like learning to understand what the car’s trying to tell you.
- Smooth Operator: I quickly learned that just yanking it from ‘D’ straight down to ‘L’ wasn’t the way to go. Much better to ease it down, if your shifter lets you, like from D to 3, then maybe to 2. The whole point was to make it less jerky.
Felt a bit daft at first, to be honest. Like I was manually doing a job that the “automatic” transmission should have been sorting out for me. But the truth is, most of these older automatics, they’re not really all that clever when it comes to proper engine braking. They’re mostly designed for cruising along on the flat, nice and smooth.
So, what I’ve ended up with isn’t some fancy bit of kit I’ve bolted on. It’s just me, knowing my car a lot better. I still use the actual brakes, of course. You can’t just rely on engine braking for everything, that’d be daft. But now, it’s more of a partnership. The engine does a fair bit of the work, especially on those long, boring downhill stretches. My brake pads are definitely happier, I reckon. And I don’t get that horrible hot brake smell anymore.
It’s not the “engine braking automatic” you see advertised for the latest shiny models. No way, not even close. It’s more like a well-rehearsed manual override that I do without thinking now. I suppose you could say I’ve made the whole process automatic for myself. And you know what? It feels pretty good to have that little bit of extra control, even in an old automatic. Sometimes just figuring out how to use what you’ve got is all you really need to do.
