Will using Tiptronic shorten the life of a car’s engine or transmission?

General Discussion
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I understand car manufacturers designed tiptronic to give drivers a feel of what it somewhat feels like to drive a manual vehicle, and that the computer that controls the automatic transmission is designed to prevent drivers from changing gears dangerously that might lead to damages.

However, when I put my car in tiptronic mode and manually change the gears myself, I can feel the car pulling back harshly when gearing down. If the car is going a certain ( unsafe ) speed for changing gears, then the computer will not allow me to change down. I like this safety feature, but I still don’t know if I’m causing any damages to the car when the computer allows me to gear down and the car pulls back harshly.

Another scenario is when I am moving off from a dead stop in 1st gear and the ramp needle goes all the way up and the car produces a forceful torque ( giving a a nice race-like feeling ). Will this damage the engine ? As mentioned before, the car has a computer that will calculate danger and take over when necessary. For example: if the ramp needle goes into the red mark, the computer self-changes the gear to bring down the needle to safe numbers.

I just want to make absolute certainty that using tiptronic will not harm the car in any way.

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I am assuming the ramp needle as you are calling it is the RPM gauge that tells you what rpms the engine is turning??

Stay with me hear, I bounce around in thought a lot… lol

I have always driven all my engines hard, some more than others, the engines typically like being in the power band more when up shifting, shifting at higher rpms, that is the pull you are feeling, the engine is happy in a way…
What you have to make sure of, is the engine/trans built well to begin with? Does the engine have good oil flow/pressure at the higher rpms, oil level full and in good shape?
Now it is not a race car and meant to always be driven like it is, but if at operating temp you want to play getting on the onramp every morning, go for it…

The killer of a transmission if built correctly is heat and clutch slippage (which causes heat), so in sport mode as long as the atf is in good shape and you are not over heating it, it is ok to run in sport mode… I drive my Tacoma around in ECT Power mode to raise the shift points and keep the rpms up a little, but that engine likes the 2000 rpms and up when shifting, but I would not run it constantly at 5000 rpms when not loaded either, cause it will build up more heat that away…

So it is OK to paddle shift and run it up to higher rpms (close to/or red line) while you are accelerating but you also need to be putting the gas pedal down hard when hitting those high rpms, DON’T just get up to speed and leave it in a lower gear leaving the rpms way high with only barely giving it any gas while cruising down the road, that is what is hard on them, I don’t like to run an engine over 3000 rpms with light throttle pressure and no load on it, the engine needs to be under a load (accelerating)… Once the engine stops pulling hard, it is no longer happy, and it is not happy at high rpms with light throttle pressure…

Now you also need to learn and know at what rpms you can down shift, if the computer says it is unsafe, then STOP doing it, and don’t be down shifting at higher rpms when slowing down.
The hold/pulling back or whatever you are feeling is the transmission using the sprag for engine braking, it uses the over running clutch/sprag (it is a one way free wheel clutch) in the transmission, and it will only rotate one way period…
Your transmission also uses the gas pedal % input etc to adjust line pressure for higher clutch holding pressures etc, and if you are not putting your foot to the floor while at high rpms, then you can damage the trans, so again, it is ok to paddle shift, just once you are at speed, go to 6th gear or whatever, just let the rpms drop below to like 2500 rpms or less…

So as long as I am accelerating, I will shift at high rpms, but once at speed, I hit high gear… I don’t down shift while slowing down unless the rpms are very low, my fun car will bark the tires if I down shift to early into 1st, not good for the drive line when not loaded, I am normally almost to a stop before down shifting…
Now if I am putting along and need to speed up really fast, then I know what gear by the speed I am at, that I can downshift to…
Example, I red line (in my fun car) in 1st at 40mph, in 2nd around 80mph, so if I am doing 50 mph in 3rd, I know I can safely downshift to 2nd with my foot to the floor, but I am going way to fast to down shift to 1st, but it will, and it would instantly slow the rear tires to 40mph or less while bouncing off the rev limiter and could cause the car to go into a spin, basically like locking up the rear tires, luckily for you your TCM will not let you do that, but that is what you are trying to do when you downshift at to high of an rpm…

My fun car has an automatic that no longer has any automatic function for shifting gears, I have to manually do all the shifting, and it WILL shift at any speed I shift it to no matter the damage it would cause… So it will up/down shift at any speed, so I have to know what speed I can up/down shift to before I do it…

So only downshift if speeding up, like to pass another car, or wait until your rpms will be very low when you downshift, while slowing down… You have brakes for a reason… When driving normal, like a state trooper is watching you, just leave it in the normal automatic mode…

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Some of these systems (maybe) use the brakes to help with that manual feel. That may be OK and won’t do any harm.

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My biggest concern would be that @Clueless33 will be paying to much attention to the tach, and not see the school bus.

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Thank you. You understood me perfectly fine.

Your answer here has provided a lot of essential information. I appreciated it.

I’m glad you mentioned about downshifting. See, I downshifted tonight incorrectly based on the information you shared. It’s no wonder the car felt like it was under stress.

Can you teach me how to shift correctly for each gear? Like say 1st gear to how many MPH before shifting to 2nd? Then from 3rd to 4th?

My car has 6 gears. Is it ok to downshift from 6 to 5 when approaching a slope/ hill ? And let’s say I want to speed up really fast, is it ok to shift from 6 to 4 while skipping 5th gear ?

After playing with the tiptronic tonight, I learned to shift similarly to the automatic way of shifting ( boring-like ) but I’m so tempted to shift like nascar fan some times :sunglasses:

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Or fail to swerve around someone doing 52 in a 55…

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Aggressive use of the shift paddles (I think ‘Tiptronic’ is Porsche’s name for their automatic) will cause some additional wear on the transmission. If you want to accelerate strongly, why not just leave it in drive and floor it? As for downshifting to control speed on a long down hill, that’s fine.

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A sure sign you are causing extra wear to the transmission. Better to use the brakes to slow the car when stopping.

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Well, in answer to your question, another thread is devoted to transmission failure to what I suspect is misse of the paddle shifters.
I do not care to drive in “sport” mode. However, some Appalachian roads would be beneficial.

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I decided to play with the tiptronic yesterday for approximately 15 mins before I returned to normal driving out of fear I might be doing harm to the car. It’s a lot of fun using tiptronic. It gives drivers a false sense of being in control of the car. I could see myself being a little kid behind the wheels while shifting.

True, I could just sink the accelerator to change gears aggressively but like I said, being in control from a mental standpoint using tiptronic is fun.

Sure won’t be fun if I break something, so I guess I’ll either learn to properly use it or abandon the temptation to use tiptronic.

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I agree
Brakes are much cheaper than transmissions.

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PM sent. . . . .

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When I read this out loud, my whole family cracked up.
Thanks

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Clueless, if you will only take one piece of advice then if you really want to play with paddles, buy a ping-pong table…

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Pretty much true of any new car nowadays. Every input you can action is essentially a request not a command. The electronic controls are designed to protect against foolish actions that might result in damage. But, and there is a but, it is possible through continued use that you cause some damage due to the cumulative nature of the stress. I’ll give you my hamburger analogy- An occasional hamburger is fine and delicious. If you eat them too frequently, they catch up with you.

Higher revving shifts are not going to hurt as long as you’re not hammering the pedal and doing it constantly…Spirited driving may warrant more frequent fluid changes as heat is a killer for transmission fluid…

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+1
On steep downgrades, I have been downshifting my automatic transmission on every car that I’ve ever owned, and I have never had a transmission problem. That represents 9 vehicles, of 7 different makes, over a period of 53 years.

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The manufacture is either blowing up there own junk or they are not… Like I said in my 24 chapter book up top, as long as everything is in good working order and the fluids are good and full, paddle shifting is not hurting anything…

And for those that don’t understand the downshifting a lot of transmissions, the over running (sprag) clutch is what uses the engine braking to help control and slow the car down… It is not harming the transmission nor the engine any…

Heck my Tacoma uses engine braking in ECT power mode almost every time I slow down from 40+mph, and I am driving it very easy cause my fur baby is in the back seat 98% of the time…

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Shifting under load or at high engine RPM reduces automatic transmission life. That’s all there is to it.

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You shift under a load every time you accelerate, the weight of the vehicle is loading the engine… i have never hurt a transmission shifting it at high rpms…

I/we even put 196,000 plus miles on a Grand Caravan with only one ATF fluid change on the A604, often driving it very hard WOT for the 1-2 shift, and the 2-3 shifts, and the last few years it was loaded down every night, 7 days a week to deliver news papers, the tires would be up in the fenders… again, that was with only one pan drop (new VB) and no flushes ever… Now it did have a OEM external cooler…

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