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I drive an 03, no drivetrain mods except a short ram air intake, which I've had for about 6 months. For the past month or two, my gas mileage numbers have been all over the place. I assumed I had just lost a receipt or two, but I've been super careful lately about tracking my mileage, and my numbers are still crazy. On my last three tanks of gas, I apparently got 9 mpg, 42 mpg, and 31 mpg. These were all pretty gentle driving, primarily in the city.
My average had been 20. If something was wrong with the drivetrain, that would explain the 9 mpg, but definitely not the 31 or the 42 mpg. What could be causing this? Is my odometer malfunctioning? If it's not recording mileage correctly that could explain my crazy mileage numbers.
Everything's normal and hovering around 20, then I have two tanks where I got 25 mpg, and those were entirely highway driving, so those numbers seem okay too. After that things get really wonky. I'd appreciate your thoughts on this.
Looks pretty forward to me..
Your average is around 22.. Unless you can record pure highway stats vs pure city stats? it will be hard to diagnose a problem.
Just for reference I do solid 30-31mpgs in the Hwy @70mph and 24 in the city @40mph average, The 2G TL rated MPGs by the EPA are very conservative to borderline wrong.
Looks pretty forward to me..
Your average is around 22.. Unless you can record pure highway stats vs pure city stats? it will be hard to diagnose a problem.
Just for reference I do solid 30-31mpgs in the Hwy @70mph and 24 in the city @40mph average, The 2G TL rated MPGs by the EPA are very conservative to borderline wrong.
Yeah, that's fair. I've just never seen anything over 25 until recently, so 41 seems crazy. And 9 is way lower than I'd like to be getting. It just seems odd because I had a really solid 20 mpg running for months, and now suddenly it's all over the place without any change in driving habits. Maybe I'm worried about nothing, but it just seemed odd.
To be fair, you only filled 5 gallons during that time! I always go until the light turns on (~15 gallons) and then fill up so my MPG calculations have one less variable to calculate.
I actually envy those numbers... on my 02 TL-S, I get 18... 19 the most around the Northern VA suburbs on a very conservative driving style... When I get to replace my spark plugs, air filter, and clean the fuel line system, I am hoping to get somewhere near you..
IMO you can't reliably calculate mpg for a single fill up without filling the whole tank. Smaller amounts can be skewed quite a bit by inconsistent fill levels.
I think the 5 gal fill up was not a full top off. It inflated your mpg for that tank and made the next one look bad, because the actual gallons used was less than you put in and used for the calculation.
03-07-2017, 09:13 PM
