At 12:12 PM 4/7/07, Jason wrote:
>It's been getting between 17.5 and 20 mpg lately, depending on the weather.
Not bad at all!
>My commute is about 2 miles getting to the freeway, then 30 miles on the freeway,
>then 3 miles getting to the office. Mostly highway miles.
Have you tried the following to see if your mpg improves?
If you've got cruise control, use it on the highway. Tests show an average saving
of 7% can be achieved. Note that cruise control doesn't save in hilly terrain. It is
more fuel efficient to let your speed drop going uphill and build up again going
down the other side.
Keep tires properly inflated (follow owner's manual recommendation) and check
your tire pressure regularly, especially after a sharp drop in temperature. Properly
inflated tires can improve mileage by around 3.3% while under-inflated ones can lower
mileage by 0.4% for every 1 psi drop in all four tires.
Get rid of excessive baggage and lighten up the weight. An extra 100 pounds in the bed
can cut fuel economy by up to 2%.
Maintain your truck regularly. Fixing a badly out of tune (spark plugs cleaned and
properly gapped, plug wires cleaned and not cross firing, distributor cap and rotor
cleaned, cleaned air filter) can improve gas mileage by an average of 4%.
Just like performance add-ons, don't expect these increases to be cumulative.
Nevertheless you should notice a significant increase.
If a reduction of $100 per month will help your financial crunch, have you looked
into the possibility of lowering your truck insurance i.e. putting on collision only and
no comprehensive or raising the deductible amounts?
Any possibility of car pooling or ride sharing?
Just some thoughts that have cropped up in my feeble and senile
mind ;-)
Bob
BTW, you forgot to mention gasoline taxes which are a huge part of gasoline prices.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon May 07 2007 - 19:04:35 EDT