[bluedog]

You can shift to N if you like. The users manual does not recommend that. The exception is when you stop for a longer time.


Als long as I had an L251 automatic, I did not shift it to N when waiting at a traffic light.


But I did something better most of the time: When I wanted to shift to N I did that and then stopped the engine to save fuel and my nerves with it. With a little practise, you will be very fast in restarting the engine.


gato311 said the most important. When shifting back to D, make sure the engine is idling. To shift from N to D (or R) while the engine is more than idling, is one of the fastest and most efficient ways to ruin the Transmission, and one of the very few ways to kill the automatic transmission. They call that power shifting and it is sometimes (or was) considdered as cool among the young guys in the us. Its nothing but burning money as fast as possible.


The second way to ruin an automatic transmission of the type used by Daihatsu very quickly, is to change driving direction while the car is not stopped yet. That is, shift from D to R (of oposite) at a speed above 0.