18mpg?

[ikeyballz]

does that sound right on a 50,000 mile neon? im so confused. the cylinders are firing perfectly..the plugs are very nice, ash colored, no deposits.. no oil/etc.. theres no smoke coming out of my tailpipes.. i dont drive TOO lead-footed, given i do floor it every so often.. but not tothe point where i should be getting 1/2 my mpg?!

so what do you think the probs are? the exh, doesnt smell eggy unless i floor it, so i dont think its a plugged cat.. the car does have decent power.. however, if this keeps up i may get a new cat..

also, my odometer is a bit low..for a 95 neon?! at one point, i didnt see the odometer spinning..so im not sure if my odometer is broken..

what do you guys think?

plugged cat? broken odometer? soemthing else?!

im so confused.

the idle is pretty good, however i do feel the engine misfiring every so often.

[denisond3]

Can you borrow a GPS unit to carry with you in the car? I got a GPS unit (Garmin Street Pilot) from my prospective son-in-law in '04. It tells me the speed we are going and the distance covered, more accurately than the gauges in the car - even when they are working right. We drove it on a 2400 mile trip in March, and the speedo only worked about half of the trip. When the speedo would drop to zero - the odometer would also quit incrementing. And sometimes the fuel gauge would quit too. So it was nice to have the GPS unit to know how many miles we had covered since last fillup.

[ikeyballz]

no, pretty sure none of my friends have one.. since i live in hawaii, theres really no use for a GPS system.. only the guys who really suck @ directions or the ones who wanna show off have em. in hawaii if you drive in one direction long enough, you're gonna end up back home.. lol

i was trying the freeway-miles counting thing..but yeah, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt..


is the gauges broken or are the sensors broken? (if i were to buy a new inst.cluster would it work?)

[ikeyballz]

help i really dont want to keep a neon thats giivng me <20mpg.. i can get that on my maro.. lolz..

[das2123]

Could be a bad O2 sensor. For the odometer, your VSS may be going out on you. When it isn't working, does the speedometer stop working also?

[ikeyballz]

sometimes, yes.. its like the spedo needle jumps up and down sometimes.. recently its been doing ok but my odom. is still out of whack.. (i think) it still saysim getting only 18mpg or so.. but if feels like im going further then what it says i am.. its really weird..also it seems like when my oil is nearer to the bottom of the dipstick, it gives me better mpg..

[das2123]

You can try resoldering your circuit board and if that doesn't fix it, then you need to change out your VSS.

[ikeyballz]

oh.. ok, thanks.. one last q, where would the vss be?

[das2123]

Originally Posted by ikeyballz

oh.. ok, thanks.. one last q, where would the vss be?

A little bit behind the battery tray and on top of the tranny. I think there is (1) 10mm or 12mm bolt holding it in.

[ikeyballz]

thanks. ill check it out.

[cody_e]

Check the air filter. Otherwise it's possible an O2 sensor. I had my upstream go out 2 times and my downstream go out once. I got 126k miles on mine. Check the obvious first. Air filter would be the first thing to check.