Fuel economy woes...

[Kinger87]

hey all new to the site, first post.

lil info, 95 base model, standard 3.0 vulcan, with AXOD, and 106K.

For starters I'm used to working on my 92 grand marquis, and the taurus is a new adventure for me. Well regardless, its my buddys car, and last year he used to get like 400 miles to a tank, or 27-30 MPG on the highway. Well starting in the winter it got like 220-240, bout 20 or so. He uses it to go back and forth to work, (90 miles all highway, so the consumption rate is annoying. ) I put new wires, plugs, cap, rotor, all the basic tune up items, with no change.

So I'm stumped, on my grand marquis, there are EGR ports, and other things you can clean to up MPG. Is there anything like that on a taurus??

TIA, Dan

[SniperX13]

did you check your fuel filter? clean the injectors?? Are you using the same gas and octane? same type of driving? I have a 98 SE wih the 3.0 Duratec, and I got about 250-300 per tank doing all highway driving, but get about 160-190 city now that I moved from the country to town when I got divorced. and remember, as the engines get more miles on them, they consume liquids faster.

[Kinger87]

yea the filter is new, same gas, 87 octane. from the same place all the time too. gonna try running a bottle of FI injector cleaner thru it. Same driving as last summer, sometimes 400+ MPT. now it gets 250 to 275. 95% highway.

[Kinger87]

gonna try cleaning the MAF tommorrow. we'll see how it goes.

[XRoll2000]

clean/check ur air filter?

how's ur O2 sensor(s)?

[Kinger87]

02's are original. Air filter is new.

[XRoll2000]

try replacing the O2 sensor, about $50 or so each. see how it goes from there.

[Kinger87]

there is only one o2 sensor??? thought there was one threaded into each manifold, least thats how it is on my grand marquis..

[Dan_in_WA]

There's just one on my '87 with the same engine and trans. Right there where the Y pipe comes together.

Bad mileage? Two main things on my car were stretched timing chain and a bad thermostat.

Your temperature guage should run in the middle, with a little bit of oscillation back and forth - which is the action of the t-stat opening and closing.

To check for a stretched timing chain, get underneath the car if necessary, and grab the crank pulley. See if you can rock it back and forth, without any resistance from the valve train. I had about 5 degrees of slop. New chain was TIGHT.

What happens here, is that the cam timing events get retarded in relation to the piston's position. This will also show up as retarded ignition timing, since the distributor is run off the cam, and you're reading the advance at the crank.

Wouldn't hurt to have the injectors professionally cleaned. Shops use a special solvent for getting all the crud out of the injectors - a bottle of something in the gas tank won't do the same job!

Gas is reformulated in the winter months, too. Expect less MPG during cold weather.

[metonic]

I drive a mix route of highway and city roads to work each day in my 98 Taurus LX Vulcan 3.0 I usually get between 300 and 320mile per a tank. Farthest I've gone is 340 and on a 16 gallon tank I had to fill up 15.3 gallons when I filled up. So I could of probably gone anotehr 10 or 15 miles.