95 civic lx, manual tranny

Normally I range between the 27-32 mpg mark (depends on my driving, sometimes as low at 25, sometimes as high as 37).
Anyway, my gas-efficiency takes a weird...pattern
Full tank, regular driving (so far I've noticed), highway or around town, the bar doesn't start to drop until about the 50 mile mark.
Between 50 miles and 100, I seem to get TERRIBLE mileage, probably around the like 20-25 mark, regardless of how I'm driving
Then at about the 150 mark, I get amazing mileage.
Any ideas?

Oh, and my clutch pedal kinda...creaks when I push it in and release it. I can both feel it and hear it. I haven't had any problems with it and I recently replaced both master and slave cylinders or whatever and bled the system.

Just curious about those two things

 

On nearly all cars, the gas gauge is not precise and linear. In other words going between full and 3/4 doesn't represent the same amount of gas as going between 3/4 and 1/2 or 1/4 and empty. The gauge is very approximate. In order to know the mileage you need to look at how much gas it actually takes to refill versus the miles traveled, and average that over several tanks.

Creaking from the clutch pedal inside the car usually means you need to grease the pivot at the top of the pedal arm, and the pivot where the rod to the slave cylinder attaches to the pedal arm.

 

All my friends and I call this phenomenon "the Honda half tank". I have owned three Civics, they have all done exactly what you just said above. It's perfectly normal.

 

dito... ditch the needle guessing! the needle is just guess work thats all. onl ything that seems to be close to accurate is the EMPTY spot.LOL find out how much gas your tank holds and do some experimenting with filling up at different spots on the gas gauge and see how accurate it is for ya and go from then.

 

hahaha the honda halftank phenomenon
brilliant
yeah, it just scares me when my needle reads half a tank, then I drive a little and it's down hovering over the red
then I drive a little more and it's back up to half
it's just like...ok? maybe I'll get gas now
then I end up filling up 6-6.5 gallons of the 12? gallon tank

 

oh, and would wd-40 work on the pedal? I'll try that tomorrow (nasty, nasty weather today in cincinnati)

 

it would work for awhile....

i would use that little can of oil. not sure what its called, just because the wd40 spray will go everywhere under the dash! so if you do just spray the pedals pivot points then at least put some rags up around the pivot points and under them and on the floor to keep any of that oil from getting on everything else and wipe down any extra oil then... otherwise it could drip on your floor or kicks if your driving it.

 

haha alright, yeah
I was plannin on spraying, then using a lighter to burn off the excess oil that went all over the place
fail-proof
I'll try and find the oil can, I think I know what you're talkin about...the kind they use in those old cartoons on robots and doors?

and diggin the use of kicks, haven't heard that in a while =p

 

i hope your joking with the lighter.LOL

 

its due to the oblong shape of gas tanks.. a gas tank that is larger ontop or when its full will take longer to show a useage in gas... if gas tanks were perfectly rectangular it would read normal from full to empty.. but a gas tank is rarely rectangular.. its usually shaped to fit whatever area it can... its either large at the top and gets narrower twords the bottom or vise versa... if theres a large volume of gas twords the top of the tank it will take longer for your gas gauge to read and as it gets lower in gas it will appear that it is consuming more gas when really your gas tank is just less in volume..

i wrote this drunk but i hope it makes sense... it did to me at the time of writing it...