Everyone,

I was going down one of the long grades on the 73 toll road here in SoCal when I decided to shift to neutral to see how fast the car would go downhill out of gear. I remember doing this in my ’97 auto Maxima without any problems. As soon as I shifted to neutral, the car stalled. I thought maybe this was fluke, so I tried it again on the next down hill run, and it happened again. Is this normal? I have a 2003.5 5AT Sedan.

Before you ask, it was a long drive, I was bored, and there were too many cops out to drive very fast this Labor Day weekend.

 

Never had that problem in my 2003 when I go neutral down the hills.

 

Same here no problems when going down hill with N, when you do this, does the RPM bounce below 500? Maybe your idle speed is too low?

 

This happened in my 2000 Maxima. I was approaching an intersection and mis-shifted from D to N but it went too far an hit Reverse -- the car instantly stalled, obviously to protect the transmission.

Perhaps this is what happened to you? Or the reverse detection is set up too close to neutral position on shifter as I believe the shift lever position is an input to the ECU.



2003.5 Sedan 6MT, Brilliant Silver

 

Thanks for your input guys. When it first happened, I suspected I “over shifted” and accidentally put it into reverse. That’s why I tried it the second time. I’m sure I didn’t over shift the second time. I think BbyG35 may be right. It may be that on a steep incline, the gear position switch incorrectly read that I had put it into reverse. Looks like I need to spend $3.25 and hit the toll road again.