Poor Fuel Consumption

WickedNYCowboy · 02-14-2005, 11:14 PM

As the title says I am getting pretty poor fuel consumption. For the past three weeks I have gotten average of 16.5 mpg and last two tanks have been 17.5 mpg. What gives? I drive the speed limit and have good tire pressure, decent plugs, and everything else I can think of that would effect the fuel consumption is good. I let it warm up a little before taking off(not more then 10-15 minutes). I also know the winter blend is known to drop fuel consumption 1-2 mpg. But this is a little extreme.

Mike Gerber · 02-15-2005, 12:29 PM

You are warming up the car way too long IMHO. This is wasting fuel. Let the car warm up 30 seconds to 1 minute (to make sure the oil is circulating to all parts of the engine) and then drive very conservatively for the first few minutes. If the temperature is 10F or below you may want to warm it up to 2 minutes. It's not the Winter blended fuel that affects mileage so much, but rather the fact that the colder the engine is, the richer the mixture must be to keep it running properly. You want to warm up the engine as quickly but as safely as possible; that's best done by driving it conservatively, after the oil has completely circulated.

Mike

hairbandmanx · 02-18-2005, 09:40 AM

Our Camry 2000 LE 2.2L only gets like 21.5 mpg in the winter time. Summer I'm usually up to 23.5 and this is a mix of ample freeway miles too. Not happy with the fuel efficiency either. I have Bosch Platinum 4 plugs and a K&N filter which only helped by 1mpg.

Strider327 · 02-18-2005, 07:05 PM

Clean out the throttle body and throw in a bottle of fuel system cleaner into your tank and see how that goes. It should take care of the problem. Too much gunk = more gas to flow through.

WickedNYCowboy · 03-07-2005, 11:58 PM

Sorry it took so long to get back. I kind of forgot getting mixed up in a lot things. The throttle body was clean and put GM Top Engine cleaner in about 1,000-1,500 miles prior. But now I put in 3-4 more tanks and it increased to 18.8MPG. I also forgot about the 25 or 50 pounds of kittylitter just incase I get stuck that is in the trunk. I will be removing to see if there is much of a difference.

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