Hello all, welcome to the forum! I'm going to go over some basics about auto maintenance for higher gas mileage. If anyone has something to add, feel free to add to the topic.

First off, routine maintenance is your best friend to get good gas mileage. If your car hasn't been maintained over time, now is the time to perform a tune up. It's usually pretty inexpensive too, especially when you figure the gas you are saving. Alot of problems with poor performance, poor fuel economy, etc. can be remedied by keeping up with routine maintenance. The following are the most important parts to keep up with for gas mileage, and overall health of your car:

Spark plugs
Fuel filter
Spark plug wires
Ignition coil
Air filter
Distributor Cap/Rotor
PCV Valve
EGR Valve
Antifreeze/Coolant
Oxygen Sensors

These are all things that are in need of routine maintenance, and all these things can really cause a problem if not given proper attention. Keeping these items in regular rotational replacement will keep your fuel mileage as high as it can be, which is kind of important these days.

You should visually inspect your spark plugs when you remove them to look for abnormal wear/tear. This can be a good method for discovering something is not right within your engine. Click the link below for a spark plug color chart.

http://www.geocities.com/pscalc/eng_sp.htm

Tire pressure is also very important. Having improper tire pressure will not only cause your tires to wear irregularly, your gas mileage will also suffer. The proper tire pressure should be on the side-wall of your tire.

And lastly, keep your foot out of it. Hard accelerating and driving at high speeds will decrease your gas mileage significantly.

That's all I've got for right now. I've gotta go give my newborn daughter a bath, then have a nice drink of rum after hearing her scream for ten minutes, she hates baths. LOL. God Bless, and Happy Motoring!

Matthew

 

Hi Matthew,

I beg to differ with this facet of your otherwise sound advice.


DON'T inflate your tires to the sidewall specs for street driving! These pressures are the maximum the tires are designed for, at full rated load.

Instead, fill your tires WEEKLY to the manufacturer's specs. My 945 has that info in the owner's manual and a sticker on the rear of the front passenger door. For my car, "normal" inflation is 28F 30R, with optional pressures of 30F 36R "for best fuel economy". Guess what I'm running these days? []

The tire sidewalls on my car show a max inflation pressure of 44 PSI. At that pressure, my fillings would fall out and the headliner would fall down. And the tires would soon be bald in the middle!

The Tire Rack has very informative articles on this subject. Here's one with a link on the page to others.

Tire Tech

 

With all my experiance I have found that running 35 PSI all the way around is the best.

 

I agree, I didn't mean to put that like that. You are absolutely right, good call. Thanks for the correction, I don't want people driving around on max pressure either. LOL. Right on.