So you've decided to pull rocks up hills with your Corolla...

Page 5 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

jlee

Lifer
Sep 12, 2001
48,517
223
106
Since god made me an honorary police officer.
Actually one would expect a normal Corolla to perform significantly worse than a police car when it comes to braking. Police cars are intended for hard and frequent braking. A Corolla is not. Remember that this is a cheap car for poor people. Everything is just barely enough to actually call it a car. This Corolla is Ford Tempo version 2.0
It also doesn't help that I'm driving on 16 inch steel (heavy) rims with 205/55r16 winter tires. These are full size winter tires and where they touch the road is much wider than the contact area for the stock all season tires. Overall weight is much higher, moment of inertia is much higher. Then on top of that I'm usually traveling around with at least one passenger.

The goal of engine braking is just to slow the car down a little bit. Remember that energy is exponential with speed. The energy difference going from 70mph to 60mph is much much larger than going from 10 to 0. Just dropping 1 gear on the highway can easily remove half of the car's energy before the brakes are applied.



That or I could be "that guy" who takes 3 miles to slow down in preparation for a turn off the highway. You bash your head against the steering wheel because it's rush hour, there's too much traffic coming in the other direction, so you can't pass me while I'm going half the speed limit :D

Decelerating to an exit is not "hard" braking. Stop driving like a jackass and start driving normally and you might get more than two years out of a new car.

Stock brakes on my Forester were still usable after a day of twelve autocross runs, and the only time I had brake fade issues with my Corolla was when a caliper seized and was dragging the pad on the rotor. It was a lot older with a lot more miles than yours, too.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
28,520
1,575
126
What I've been doing for the past 1.5 years was downshifting when slowing down from highway speeds. Apparently automatics don't like it when people do that because the thing doesn't rev match at all. It burns out the clutches just as bad as if someone was doing that with a manual and not rev matching. In the future I'll never ever downshift for anything then just rely on brakes. Brake pads are about $20, but having your transmission fixed (when not under warranty) is more like $2,000.



That's weird such a towing package doesn't exist. Even cars like the Honda Fit and Ford Fiesta have optional tow hitches.
images

I have always downshifted my autos to slow down and never had a hiccup with any of them. Downshifting an auto does no harm whatsoever in my experience. From cheap to expensive, none of them had a problem at all with downshifting. I've never had a transmission repaired except once, and that was a factory recall shortly after I got the car.
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
I have always downshifted my autos to slow down and never had a hiccup with any of them. Downshifting an auto does no harm whatsoever in my experience. From cheap to expensive, none of them had a problem at all with downshifting. I've never had a transmission repaired except once, and that was a factory recall shortly after I got the car.
Indeed, I get a lot of mixed replies about the engine braking thing.
IMO, downshifting to decelerate shouldn't be any harder on the transmission than downshifting to accelerate. It just has that light jerk when it drops a gear (the exact same jerk as when you hit the gas a little harder), then the rest of it is smooth deceleration.

I've heard some cars will actually use engine braking as part of the cruise control. If you have the cruise control set to 60 and you start going down a hill, the car will drop a gear to maintain constant speed.
 

LTC8K6

Lifer
Mar 10, 2004
28,520
1,575
126
Indeed, I get a lot of mixed replies about the engine braking thing.
IMO, downshifting to decelerate shouldn't be any harder on the transmission than downshifting to accelerate. It just has that light jerk when it drops a gear (the exact same jerk as when you hit the gas a little harder), then the rest of it is smooth deceleration.

I've heard some cars will actually use engine braking as part of the cruise control. If you have the cruise control set to 60 and you start going down a hill, the car will drop a gear to maintain constant speed.

Yes, my Grand Cherokee downshifts by itself when going downhill.

It has a manumatic function as well.

The owner's manual tells you to downshift and tells you how to get the manumatic to automatically select the correct gear when you downshift.

In fact, my trans has 2 different 2nd gear ratios, One for upshifts, and one for downshifts.

I owned a 1997 Chevy Cavalier Z24 for 11 years. 2.4L DOHC 4 auto trans. I loved to downshift that because the engine sounded wonderful. I did it all the time. Never had a problem.

Now I have the hemi, and it really sounds lovely when you drop a gear.

I typically downshift to slow down when I can see that I'll have to stop well ahead. Traffic stopped in the distance, red light in the distance, etc.
 

simonizor

Golden Member
Feb 8, 2010
1,312
0
0
You're a fucking moron. The fact that someone managed to haul a camper with a Kia once doesn't mean that the transmission is any better than the transmission in the Corolla.
 

Sukhoi

Elite Member
Dec 5, 1999
15,332
95
91
It also doesn't help that I'm driving on 16 inch steel (heavy) rims with 205/55r16 winter tires. These are full size winter tires and where they touch the road is much wider than the contact area for the stock all season tires.

Why the hell would you get wider winter tires?
 

PlasmaBomb

Lifer
Nov 19, 2004
11,636
2
81
I'm watching Top Gear videos on youtube. This one in particular seemed oddly familiar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN7jmLeiJhE

I remember a while back we had a thread about pulling camping trailers with a small truck (or I derailed a thread by saying something about this). AT Garage immediately responds by saying such a feat is absolutely impossible, there's no way god would allow such a thing to happen, and having anything less than 10 cylinders in a towing vehicle is blasphemy.

Pretty sure no one other than Clarkson has suggested a V10 for towing...

Here in the UK, we pray to a different god, and that god does allow such things to happen. The guys on Top Gear managed to get 3 fully grown adults in a car with a 1.5L engine and pull a respectable size camping trailer up hills. Did the engine fuck up? No. Did the transmission melt? No. Is it possible to pull a camping trailer with a piece of shit car? Absolutely.

You will also notice it's not an auto...

You'll notice that while going up the hill, they're stuck going 30mph at full throttle. That vehicle truly is pushed as hard as it can go, and it's not fucking up.

Actually you will notice that the car + caravan is doing 30mph just after leaving a 30mph zone... and the engine isn't screaming which suggests that Captain Slow isn't trying that hard (no downshift + WOT)

It then cuts to a "queues likely" scene, and doesn't tell you what speed it is going, though later you see them on a motorway (interstate), which suggests they can indeed go at more than 30mph.

Absolute video proof that my failed transmission is because Toyota vehicles are designed by retards. That Kia has even less power capability than my Corolla and its transmission managed to not melt.

No.
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
Why the hell would you get wider winter tires?
so the speedometer is correct?
It's illegal to use the wrong size tires here. I've never heard of anyone ever gettting a ticket for that though (similar to how having a fart can muffler is illegal and nobody cares). I think next time around I'll get tires that are narrower and smaller. Fuck 205/55R16 (stock tire size). Let's try some random numbers like 165/60R14. If anything I'll just end up driving half the speed limit like every other Toyota on the road. Smaller tires also improves 0-60 times, which would help quite a bit when dealing with a car that has terrible 0-60


It then cuts to a "queues likely" scene, and doesn't tell you what speed it is going, though later you see them on a motorway (interstate), which suggests they can indeed go at more than 30mph.
They were likely stuck in one of those situations where gear 2 has enough torque but gear 3 does not. If you try going faster in gear 2, it means you're red lining the engine just to drive 40mph. If you shift into gear 3, the car no longer has enough torque to carry the load, and the engine would bog down. As a result, you're stuck going 30 :p
 

Zenmervolt

Elite member
Oct 22, 2000
24,512
21
81
so the speedometer is correct?
It's illegal to use the wrong size tires here.

If they're the same size, they aren't wider by any meaningful amount. If they were wider, they wouldn't be the stock size anymore. That's kind of the whole point to having sizes. The variance between the width of a 105 series all-season and a 205 series winter tire is not going to be sufficient to have any real-world affect on mileage or acceleration.

Also, steel wheels are often lighter than factory alloys for "everyday" cars since most non-sportscars use alloys for style rather than for lightness. As a result, most alloys are relatively cheep cast wheels. Generally you only see meaningful weight reduction from forged alloy wheels, but since forging is expensive, these are usually restricted to high-dollar sportscars. A Corolla will have basic cast alloy wheels for style purposes and will not see any meaningful decrease in wheel weight over the base steel wheels. Even in cases where factory alloys are lighter, the difference is generally on the order of only 1-2 pounds per wheel, something that would really only ever be noticeable on racetracks.

ZV
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
If they're the same size, they aren't wider by any meaningful amount.
The contact area is. Several people have suggested that my tires might be flat (because they look flat), but every tire gauge says they're somewhere within the accepted 30-35psi range. That's just what winter tires do. They flatten out to make very wide contact.


This is the best pic I can find on google. The tires are Dunlop Graspic DS-1. This guy might have overinflated the tires since they usually sag out more than this.
241080_s.jpg




A Corolla will have basic cast alloy wheels for style purposes and will not see any meaningful decrease in wheel weight over the base steel wheels. Even in cases where factory alloys are lighter, the difference is generally on the order of only 1-2 pounds per wheel, something that would really only ever be noticeable on racetracks.
Fair enough, rims might be just a couple pounds difference; nothing too dramatic. The winter tire and steel rim combination is definitely a lot heavier. They're a real pain to put on.
 

jlee

Lifer
Sep 12, 2001
48,517
223
106
One mostly fills wheel wells, the other has a four inch gap. What "standard older compact car" is in your picture?
 

EightySix Four

Diamond Member
Jul 17, 2004
5,122
52
91
Also, my understanding is that you want snow tires to be thin so that they cut through snow instead of riding on top of it. You don't want them to flatten out.
 

ShawnD1

Lifer
May 24, 2003
15,987
2
81
One mostly fills wheel wells, the other has a four inch gap. What "standard older compact car" is in your picture?

sexually ambiguous cars
2001.toyota.echo.10247-300x189.jpg



european cars
tata-743515.jpg



nissan D:
ag_09versa_wheel.jpg




Also, my understanding is that you want snow tires to be thin so that they cut through snow instead of riding on top of it. You don't want them to flatten out.
They just go that way because the rubber is very soft. The hardcore tire deformation is also part of the reason the tires are very loud when used on dry pavement ;)
 

jlee

Lifer
Sep 12, 2001
48,517
223
106
So I ask you what car is in your picture, and you post three different cars.

Brilliant.
 

Meghan54

Lifer
Oct 18, 2009
11,684
5,222
136
I can't believe Shawn cannot tell the difference between a Graspic and a temp. spare donut. Unbelievable.....but in his case, I guess not.