What are these gears for in my car?

Question

ok i know that P is for park, R for reverse, N for neutral. my car has a couple other ones, though. i use D4 to drive, and then there are D3 and just the number 2. what are these two other gears for?

2000 Honda Civic

Answer 1

use those gears when driving down a steep hill to avoid using your brakes and causing them to lock.

Answer 2

any gears under drive give you the ability to put your automatic car into "manual."  For example when I lived in the mountains I often found it easier to put my car into 2nd gear when going up hills.  Its the same principle as when you ride a bike, you gear down for hills and up for straightaways.  this way you tell you car what u want to do to provide yourself with a smoother ride.

Answer 3

i think its to drive on different levels of hill. maybe d3 is to drive on steep hills etc

not sure , im from uk, where we drive proper cars, gear 1-5, reverse and neutral

get a proper car!

Answer 4

Most transmissions have full automatic drive as just drive and drive with overdrives as OD. In your car D4 is likely the same as OD giving you automatic 4 speed.

The others are restricted shifts.

D2 never shifts above second gear.

This is used for towing trailers usually.

It also allows the engine to provide some braking going down hills.

D3 in your car is likely similar but only prevents the car from using the overdrive gear. It likely does not provide any engine braking when going down hills.

Normally you will never need anything except your normal automatic drive D4. It will handle all the shifting just fine..

Answer 5

you have a 4-speed automatic, so the D4 means you the transmission will go up to the 4th gear and you'll be at it's most fuel efficiency.  When you shift to D3, the transmission is limited to going up to only 3rd gear.  You would "down shift" on occasions of steep hills where you're transmission constantly jumps between gear, so you put it down to 3rd gear for more power.  2 is low gear for "towing" if you even attempt it and need more power to start off.  You keep the engine in 2nd gear, but this is almost never used.

Answer 6

They keep the transmission from shifting to a higher gear. If you're in D3, it' will keep the car from shifting to 4th gear.

The only time you shift to D3 or D2 is when you're going up and down hills.