I was reading "FOUR WHEELER" magazine and they had an article on how to achieve better gas milage.What do you guys think about it?If you feel there are more tips or better tips lets here it.Im trying to find the best least expensive ways to achieve good gas milage.


1~ Regear your axles after you install bigger tires.(recalibrate the speedo too.Other wise your odometer will fool you into thinking your mpg is worse than it actually is)

2~Consider an overdrive unit for your juice transmission if you a three-speed.Swapping in a stick tranny in place of an automatic will give you a milage benifit too,but it'll cost a bit money and sweat equity.(personally i dont understand the full benifit of this one.)

3~Make sure your engine and fuel-delivery system are in their proper state of tune.Improper carb jetting,clogged injections and filters,improperly gapped spark plugs,or a wirn-out O2 sensor can all degrade milage.

4~Consider upgrading your air filter and exhaust components to freer-flowing aftermarket parts.Many can vastly improve intake and exhaust flow- and with it,milage.They can also get you more power (Do they make intake that are still good for off roading?I heard that the aftermarket intakes are bad.Like when you get into mud and deep water etc)

5~Use synthetc lubes.They cost more but they do reduce the wear on internals.

6~Make sure you tires are properly inflated and aligned.

7~Install an electric cooling fan in place of the stock beltdriven piece.This can get more power too (Were do you get an electrc cooling fan for a ranger and how much better for milage and power are they??)

8~Weight! Reduce the weight as much as you can everypund counts.

9~If your truck runs ac run it only when you truely need it.

10~Watch how you drive.Short trips,jackrabbit starts, and too-high (or too low) revving can hurt milage.

taken seperatly each step might only improve 1 mile per gallon or so..but add the all together and you can have some real gains.Im not sure about all of them but i did think it was an interesting article.Hope you all liked it.

 

nice tips,i need to recal my speedo soon.

 

lol i got one that my step dad told me about last night, it goes with #10...shift before redline not after...good post though

 

Those are all pretty easy to acheive. Even if you do half of them you are still ahead if you didnt.

 

How many want to bet that 90% of your fuel savings comes from number 10?
Like the person that passes me, cuts me off and takes the next exit?
The person that thinks every redlight is a christmas at the track?
The people that think they should slam the brakes on 20 feet from the redlight?

An example: My 2003 Victory Classic Cruiser.
I have a passenger that adds 100+ lbs on the bike. I have someone to care for so I drive safely. I get 43 MPG. I ride alone and the worse mileage is from bridges and tunnels cause I HAVE to pull the clutch in and lite off the pipes. Riding alone I average 37 MPG.

 

Wow only 37 mpg. Thats a gas hog. HAHA jk

 

The reason manuals get better gas mileage is that automatic transmissions have high energy losses due to fluid pumps, torque converter slip which wastes energy as heat, etc.

To put it another way: for every unit of energy you put on the input shaft, a manual puts more of it on the output shaft than an automatic does.

 

I think the auto to manual conversion they speak of is to upgrade from the old low low top gear 3 speed tranny
modern automatic transmissions (and I do NOT mean the one in a Ford Ranger) get better gas milage than manuals
most have true 5 speeds (NOT like a Ranger 5 **cough** speed auto) and some even 6 forward automatic gears
lock up converters + computer guided shifts make manuals as efficent if not more so than rowing the gears by hand
window stickers and their MPG figures prove this out

 

i have my tonno cover,
take the highway to work,
keep my windows rolled up,
and always try and set the cruise control around 50 or 55 mph (meanin the rpms stay low)

Basically just leavin earlier for work so i can cruise there.

 

how much does that cost to do??

 

A "TONNEAU COVER" is a good idea.I was thinking of that.How much does it truely improve you gas milage?Like can you notice the difference?How much can you get those for and are they easy to remove for putting dirtbikes in the back?thnks

 

I have about a 20 mile commute to work. It's all highway and usually it's smooth rolling with no traffic. As most of you know, I'm reletively impatient and don't like waiting for anything. It's one of my downfalls but I've always been that way. I would always have the cruise control set for 75 in the left lane. The limit is 65 and the flow in the left lane is usually always around 75 so I'm not going crazy or anything. (The looney toons are the ones going 90+). I'd been driving like that for a good 3 years. I got around 16 MPG regularly.

One day, I was going to work for a night shift and I was sick as a dog. I wanted to just roll over and die but I refused to call in sick because it would leave them short. I was so sick, I couldn't go as fast as I normally do or it would make me feel worse. I ended up in the right lane and only going about 60-65 tops. Other than being sick, it felt really odd going that slow too. However, after I arrived at work it also occurred to me that it only set me back a few minutes. It wasn't a substantial time difference and certainly not one that had any effect on my punching in on time. This was around the same time as gas being over $3/gal post Katrina. I had the motivation to not use as much gas so I decided to do a tank or two slowed down and see what happened.

By going along at 60-65 instead of 75 (~2100RPM vs ~2600+RPM), my MPG went from 16 to 18+. I was happy, I could see it made a positive difference in mileage and no effect on my time table. I felt much less stressed after the commute as well since I wasn't always swearing to myself about the people in the left lane going too slow. I wish I figured this all out years ago.

 

100% best way to increase MPG... walk....



i still get 19mpg on my last tank with 32's and a 4cyl i am not complaining lol

 

Whats a jackrabbit start?

 

^i would say it means gunning it, flooring it, pedal to the metal, also stated above "treating every stop-light like it's a christmas tree light"..lol

 

yep, fast starts, and generally fast stops, not only does that kill ur mileage, but in an older vehical with high mileage, its a good way to blow apart a ujoint

 

Best answer to increase milage walk lol funny but true.

 

Another thing that hurts mileage is an idling engine. People who sit in the parking lot with the engine running are getting 0 mpg...

 

going to the track rapes your gas mileage! haha 1/4tank in one night hahah :(
i read somewhere a while back, 40mph will yeild the best mpg since the rpms are around 1300 or so when ur cruising at 40... but hardly anywhere the speed limit is 40 ha

 

HaHaHa...Brings back memories Matt. I use to drive like that also. I know it's before your time, but after the first Arab oil embargo (ask your dad) in 1973,
the NATIONAL speed limit was set at 55MPH. My daily commute at the time was 46 miles EACH WAY. About 39 or 40 was Interstate. I thought holy crap Batman.
It's going to take me all day to get to work. So I left home 30 mins earlier then usual. I got to work 25 mins early. I thought that can't possibly be.
So I got a stop watch and for the next month I timed my trips both ways driving the way I normally did. (75MPH)
Then for the next month I got in the right hand lane and drove at 55MPH. I threw out times that were way off due to accidents and stuff like that.
So I only used NORMAL driving times. Don't recall the diff in gas mileage (gas was still ONLY $.60 per gal at the time.) but the diff in time was 4 mins.
I couldn't believe it. So I did the test again. The diff that time was 5 mins. I also tried this on the 425 mile trip to my daughters home.
Average diff. was about 45 mins. So the average seems to be 1 min for every 10 miles or so.
Drive fast if you want to, but unless you're driving a long distance, say 400-500 miles or so. You're not really going to save that much time.

 

Saw a couple of interesting shows on "Myth Busters." Windows up with the A/C on vs windows down with the A/C off.
Interestingly enough at 45MPH you will get BETTER mpg with the windows down and the a/c off. About 10/15% better.
Guess there's not enough drag from the open windows at that speed and below to offset the loss in power from the A/C.
I think at Interstate speeds, 70-80 mph, windows up and a/c on would probably be about the same as windows down and no a/c.
Same thing with tail gate up/down. With the tail gate UP, they got BETTER mpg. Conventional wisdom use to say it was the other way around.


I noticed about 1 mpg improvement when I installed my tonneau cover. I have a hard cover and I would suspect the extra 100-125 lbs it weighs is probably costing me .5 to .75 mpg.
A canvas cover would probably get you about 2 mpg plus or minus a bit IMO. And unlike a hard cover, you can roll it up or remove it when you need to.
Cost woulld probably be in the $250-600 range depending on what you buy and where you buy it. Hard covers are about $1,000 plus, minus a bit.

 

That makes sense, I was thinking for some reason it was referring to when u start your truck haha

 

some US department says that 54 is the most economic speed on most vehicles... on mid 90's models youll see a little extra tick at 54, my escort did an my friends corolla did also...
this is also the reason that many highways were changed to 55...


in my truck 40mph is still not in overdrive, i have to be going about 50 to it to shift and even then im hovering between gears and itll downshift if i hit the slightest hill...

number 1 and 2 are pretty dumb imo.. number one doesnt even increase your millage, its just for those people that cant calculate the percent of diffrence in their tire diameter...

 

well i dont really run my a/c. call me a cheapass but i actually enjoy warm weather, so when it gets hot, i might crack the window just a bit. and with the ventshades i'd guess it wouldn't hurt the "airflow" all that much.

and i said 55 because that is about right after it hits 4th gear. so the rpms are pretty low.