Getting Better Highway MPGs?

Proper maintenance and tire pressure as many have mentioned is key... but remember they use to say drive like you have a egg between your foot and the gas padal. Really pay attention to your driving habits and you will save gas.

 

Erm. Could someone tell me how to remove that little cubby? I don't want to break it by forcing something .

 

Yes, it has I think three available ports where you can plug in the cable, I plugged it in the back.

As far as routing the wire, I brought it into the cubby hole just beside the steering wheel. I think about 3/4" of the wire might be visible if you know what you're looking for. I'll see if I can take a picture of it later.

 

Someone on here did a sweet job with a couple of clips glued to the scangauge, and clipping it to the edge of the headliner.

 

Saw that, and want to get there, just haven't gone out looking for cheap clips yet.

 

Scangauge really helps maximizing fuel economy by letting you know in real time how much you are really wasting.

As for the scangauge mounting location, use detective_dan's method, it is by far the best.

 

TacoDacks,

You just changed the air filter, not the whole cold air intake thing and got 1.5-2 mpg better? What did the filter cost you? It seems like that would be worth it, as long as it was just a cheap air filter.

 

Careful! If you have a heavy foot it will cost you fuel not save you!

 

My 2005 DC auto I was getting 18-19mpg & drove it like I stole it.

My 2011 DC auto, babying it & getting 15-17mpg.

Same 20" wheels on both trucks, K&N airfilter.

 

If you park the MF you get great mileage, why are you driving a truck if you want gas mileage? Sell it and get a Prius or some other hideous gas miser!

 

I'm not looking for the 50+MPG the Prius gets, I understand it's a pickup truck. However, some of us would like something better than 16~MPG.

Anyways, I'd prefer the Prius over any other "green" car out there, not only is it a toyota, i think it looks great, and all the bells and whistles on the interior is more than enough to satisfy any nerd .

 

So you don't care about gas mileage at all? It would not bother you one bit if everyone else here gets 20 mpg and your truck was getting 5mpg? 2mpg?

Where's the limit where you would be bothered by the gas mileage of your truck?


It's like people's manhood is threatened if someone wants to conserve money.

 

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Big rig drivers with trucks that put down 2,000+ ft. lbs of torque care about their fuel economy...I wonder why they bought a truck instead of a Prius.

 

1bigbird- you are saying just changing the air filter will result in less mpg's if you have a heavy foot?

 

I just noticed you have a prerunner. I have a 4x4 lifted (stock tires) and got 21.5 the last tank. 301 miles! 47 miles 1 way to school for me!

 

Well according to Fuelly, I got 19MPG on my last fillup, we'll see how much higher i can get that.

 

I didn't read every post so forgive me if this point has been made.

I, like the OP, want to get reasonable MPG, but realize a pick-up is what it is. For the first few years I got roughly 19mpg. Mixture of hwy/city driving, but it was rarely 20, rarely 18.

When my OEM tires wore out I went up to 265-75-16 - knowing my mileage would suffer a bit. Sure enough it did - at first. Dropped about 1 MPG at most.

Then something changed - over the last couple months I've kept track closely and my average MPG over the last 50 driving hours is 20.43MPG, and rising. This takes into account the conversion for the slightly larger tires and is double calculated with each fill up.

What made the difference? My new Kenwood HU. As part of the Nav system it keeps track of my mileage. The key is I can see what my mileage is doing second to second. I didn't used to be obsessed, but when you can see the numbers and what your average is doing it helps you change your habits. I had no plans to use this to improve my mileage, but now I figure I'm saving about $.02/per mile - depending on the cost of gas. If I can manage to put 70K more miles on the truck I'm gonna tell my wife that Kenwood has officially paid for itself!

Seriously though - feedback, with the scangauge or anything similar will really help if you use it.

 

First of all thanks, yeah, I understand it's a pickup truck, so I'm not expecting the fuel economy of a hybrid or a I4, but you know, anything to save a few dollars is nice. hell i love the 4.0L V6 in our trucks, when I first got it, I was so surprised at how much grunt this V6 has.

Anywho, yeah I got a scangauge and I like it so far...speaking of that...here's a picture.



Over 9000! MPG!, If you've ever watched Dragon Ball you'd probably get my pun .

And I really like how the SGII shows how much horsepower you're putting out. I've only been driving around the city, and well at about 1,500RPM in 1st/2nd it's usually around 40HP. I've also noticed, when I was on a straight road, I had the A/C on, going about 40MPH, and it was reading 33MPG, so I turn the A/C off and the MPG reading jumped to 38MPG! I didn't move my foot or anything.

 

Yes. EFI vehicles measure the amount of incoming air a free flowing air filter will let more air pass. More air = more fuel = more power.
If you keep the rpm's down and from using too much throttle you save fuel!
The vehicles have a memory so 5min of heavy foot and 5min of light gets you nothing!

 

Just to be clear - my first statement was intended to imply that I thought you and I had a similar approach to this issue, not to be one of the many who say "if you wanted better mileage you shouldn't have gotten a truck." I can see how it reads both ways.

Anyhow - I'll bet you'll enjoy the Scangauge.