I've been noticing when coasting in gear in my 07 Fit Sport with AT that the engine braking is destroying my ability to coast. I totally understand that no fuel is being consumed when coasting in gear and nuetral consumes fuel to stay running...read plenty of arguements on that. My complaint is I can maintain speed or even accelerate in neutral but have to add throttle to maintain speed in gear.

My issue is, the engine braking is too severe and my engine wants to spin at 2000-3000 rpms a lot of the time and I can definitely feel like something is holding me back when I let off the throttle going down a slight hill. This is very noticeable around the 25-45 mph range. On some of the roads near my house, I can accelerate in nuetral from 25-40mph down a slight grade. If I stay in gear, I have to give the car throttle to maintain anything higher than 25mph. I've tried putting the tranny into 5th manually to lower the rpms but it just flashes at me and won't shift until I've reached a certain speed.

Is this normal? Is there anything I can do to change it? All my other cars would automatically coast at around 1000-1500 rpms dependings on speed once you let off the throttle for a couple seconds.

 

Saves on brake wear. Enjoy.

 

It's normal for a Honda. The Odyssey does the same thing. Try shifting to neutral. Yes it burns a tiny bit of fuel idling in N, but you save momentum and the fuel you have to spend to get back up to speed.

 

Interesting... Guess this is the first Honda I've ever driven that was an automatic. The rest were manuals and the engine braking is expected with that at higher revs.

 

Totally normal and expected. In case your car is downshifting, which it doesn't sound like it is, you could always touch the paddle shifter to go to a lower gear. Otherwise, all cars are the same in this regard except that weight, displacement, ECU fuel control, and final drive ratio affect coasting. And for some geekdom: Driving a heat engine in reverse, which is what you do with an automobile ICE going downhill, removes heat from the engine and cools it. The vacuum created in the cylinders on the intake stroke when little or no air is introduced absorbs heat (pressure proportional to temperature)

 

Keep in mind constantly going between gears and nuetral puts quite a bit of stress on your transmission and motor mounts. Keep an eye on them and when they start clunking, time to find a performance shop to fill them up to make em stiffer and take the abuse for a far longer time