I was trying to quickly merge into my left lane and for some reason I was thinking I was still driving a stick and accidentally put my car in neutral. I quickly put it back in "D" then all of a sudden I lost power. Tried to accelerate and saw the RPM go up but the car wouldn't accelerate. Luckily there was a stop light ahead so I could stop. Put the car in Park then back to Drive and it was back to normal. I tried replicating the scenario but couldn't. Has this every happen to anyone else? Did I damage something?

yeah that happens when you do that. when you kicked it into neutral you took it out of gear. when you put it back in D, the tranny has to rev-match to get back in gear and at highway speeds, its a little harder. and when you revved it, it made it that much harder for the tranny to engage again. if you just let off the pedal, the car should be able to get back into gear in like 2-3 seconds at the most.

i hope im correct with all of that.

this happened to me before also. was on the 5 close to fresno, heading back up to sac when i accidentally shoved the shifter into neutral.. popped it back into drive and gassed it only to see the rpm jump but speed continued declining.

scared the **** out of me, and mind you i was driving alone at 4am.

yeah it happened to me. its okay, nothing big. I agree what Kev said, just give it a second or two.

haha i have a lot of experience with this because i intentionally kick it into neutral to rev it every once in a while at a jaywalker or something

Tranny ain't cheap man... they rarely do rebuilt any more

yeah its ok. when you put it in neutral, you disengaged the torque converter from the gears. Then when you put it in D, the torque converter wasn't fully locked in yet, hence why you rev the engine and it wasn't going anywhere.

It should be ok, just dont do it often since the torque converter was not designed to do this.

Oh wow that is wierd. Luckily it hasn't happened to me ever. I usually do put it into neutral when pulling to a stoplight and then throw it into drive again before the light is green. Is that bad for the tranny?

No. That is 'driving-school' perfect... Not many of us do it though!

so it's okay to pop the gear into neutral while cruising?

I used to do this with my old car (93 Probe GT), but it was a 5-speed manual. Used to big-time increase my gas mileage. But I've always been a bit weary of doing this in an auto though.

Cintoman

, that was what i was thinking. i do it a lot especially when i'm ion a really big hill going down.
but i don't know if it's good for the car.

Thanks for all the comment in this threat. It is very enlightening and informative. I had done exactly what you guys did by pussing it into neutral - often accidentally and sometimes on purpose, not to scare the jaywalkers though. I was so afraid of doing damage to the transmission and as you say - not cheap to repair. But now I rest assured. Well, won't do it on purpose any more. I suppose it's also important to wait the 2-3 seconds and NOT rev the motor during that time....

Well, thanks guys for the info!!!!

Be glad you missed the "clutch" pedal. New heights in feeling even more stupid than usual.