Haha, I'll grab a cold book instead. My girlfriend has been getting pissed cause we've been studying for midterms all weekend and I keep going out doing crap on my car and she'll be like "what the hell is your problem?" and I'm like "I gotta try another thing so I can reply on the forum!" LOL. This stuff is insignificant to most chics.

A million thanks for the help guys. Let's see if I can break 25mpg.

 

Definitely refocus on your studies. Good luck with the exam.

 

lol, i know what you mean. most women would just continue to drive it with problems until it breaks down on them in the middle of nowhere, and then take care of the problem and get pissed off when the mechanic tells them they should have gotten it fixed when the problem first started.

 

Hey, I meant to ask yesterday, when I tripped the CEL for timing adjustment, it also had the SRS lit solid. Just wanted to make sure that's normal and not my car telling me that my face will eat the steering wheel in an accident, instead of just a mere broken neck / severed head from the airbags.

 

Means no SRS trouble code = good.

 

So, I'm still getting about 20mpg on half city / half highway driving. And my "city driving" is definitely more similar to highway driving than it is to stop/go rush hour downtown driving, if that makes sense.

Here's everything I've maintained in the past two weeks:

Air Filter
Oil
Oil Filter
Spark Plugs
Plug Wires
Distributor Cap
Rotor
Set timing
Seafoam treatment

What else could be causes of such poor fuel economy? I'm not like incredibly bugged by the 20mpg, my concern is mostly regarding health of the car (though better fuel economy is always nicer to the wallet).

The timing belt was done around 60k miles. It's now at 120k and I'm saving up to have this performed. Is there any other notable considerations? The valves are noisy at first when I start the car and it's cold... Any pointers?

 

Have you checked your tire pressure?

Are your tires new or wornout? That could be a cause to why your MPG are low. Also what kind of air filter, oil and oil filter are you using? The quality also helps boost your MPG.

 

My tires are new and have 32psi. Oil filter is K&N, oil is Mobil1 premium synthetic. The air filter is just a Fram filter. Probably shoulda got a better one...

 

Don't worry about it. I'd just get a K&N drop-in OEM fitment filter though next time, but don't do it until you need a new filter. This one will work fine, and it's not what's giving you 20mpg.

I was having poor gas mileage driving in the same type of city (more like highway) driving you described. I replaced everything like you did. I then ran some Lucas Synthetic (has to be synthetic for synthetic oil) Oil Stabilizer and poured in the instructed amount, and ran some Lucas fuel stabilizer (or fuel additive? something like that, it's in a small bottle) in with a full tank of gasoline. You might also try running a tank or two of premium gas... the additives in it help clean the engine out pretty good (no need to keep getting premium though after that). I prefer BP Ultimate (or Amoco Ultimate) (which is 93 octane).

I'm getting considerably better gas mileage and I haven't changed my driving style one bit... I used to get 100-120 miles before I got to the half tank marking (this is of course an estimate, you have to properly check mileage by starting with a full tank and the trip meter at 0, and then drive a while, fill up and then divide how many miles you've driven by how much gas it takes to fill the tank) and the at the pump calculation was 26mpg. now I'm almost to 150 and I'm still a little above halfway. I haven't gotten to check the gas milage, but i'm anticipating something around 30mpg (last time was 28 and this time seems like it's going to be considerably better).


Another thing... did you change the oil, oil filter, and spark plugs AFTER the seafoam treatment? because you need to.

 

Yeah, all that stuff was changed after the Seafoam.

I will try to do a couple tanks of premium. I just hope something bad isn't going on. No CEL codes or anything like that. Maybe exhaust? Maybe transmission dying? I always assume the worst when I'm as poor as I am. Heh. Could it be tranny fluid? I haven't changed that yet. It's pinkish yellow, but still shifts nicely as far as I can tell (all previous cars have been stickshift). I can definitely feel it shift sometimes, but it's never abrasive of *thunk* or *bam*.