DX/LX/EX: Your Gas Mileage

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted by tim9294

i really don't care about my MPG, i rather wait for my car to warm up to use it. I still get about 28 MPG all city. I don't think that bad at all, with about 5 mins warm-ups each day.

Enjoy lower MPG, higher engine wear and less oil life! Seriously, I hope you are at least driving for a good distance (~10 miles) to burn off all of the condensation and unburned fuel that you introduce into your engine by doing this. If you do drive it a good distance than really the only loss you're going to notice is MPG.

[packers04]

depends on where he lives, if its a really cold area, its better to let it warm up than it is to get in and pull out as soon as the car is started.

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted by packers04

depends on where he lives, if its a really cold area, its better to let it warm up than it is to get in and pull out as soon as the car is started.

I see Florida just below his name, so probably not too cold there. Even so, unless you're in temps that your oil can't flow at (we're talking temps like -30F and below) then it is not only better for your engine to drive it lightly-moderately to warm it up, it saves a good bit of fuel. 10 seconds of idle is enough time under all but those temps where the oil doesn't flow well enough.

[fitforlife]

Just calc'd 36mpg for my first official fill up.
There's some inconsistency since I didnt get to use the exact same pump that I did the very first time.
I'm happy with this but am still aiming to improve it.

[packers04]

Originally Posted by OrdnanceMarine

I see Florida just below his name, so probably not too cold there. Even so, unless you're in temps that your oil can't flow at (we're talking temps like -30F and below) then it is not only better for your engine to drive it lightly-moderately to warm it up, it saves a good bit of fuel. 10 seconds of idle is enough time under all but those temps where the oil doesn't flow well enough.

didnt' read that. your right, when its cold i don't let my car idle but for enough time for all the idiot lights to go out, then i drive it under 3k rpms till the temp starts to go up. i average 34 mpg or so 15 mile drives each way to work with a ton of stoplights.

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted by packers04

didnt' read that. your right, when its cold i don't let my car idle but for enough time for all the idiot lights to go out, then i drive it under 3k rpms till the temp starts to go up. i average 34 mpg or so 15 mile drives each way to work with a ton of stoplights.

I know that area and 34 MPG sounds great for this time of year! I've found that stop signs are often better for hypermiling than lights since I never get caught with a stop sign changing while I'm going full speed.

[uabcar]

Update. My first three tanks of the year are 34.6mpg, 30.0mpg and 30.3mpg. All suburban driving- 9 mile commute to/from work with 10 stoplights.

I'd estimate that the crappy winter gas and cold air have impacted my avgs by about 3-4mpg (my summer avg was in the 37-38 range). The remaining 2-3 mpg delta comes from not trying very hard - the uphill battle - bad gas and cold air - can be discouraging.

It's starting to warm up and I expect the summer gas cut over to happen in the next month or so in the midwest. I'll be back to pursuing the elusive mpg tank soon. My car (an 08 EX MT Sedan) now has 9k miles so the engine is looser now than last year.

[Louisville Slugger]

Date: 03/12/10.
$/Gallon: $2.739.
Gallons Purchased: 10.115.
Miles Driven: 309.1.
MPG: 30.6.
L/100km: 7.7.
Total Cost: $27.70.
$/Mile: $0.09.
Station: Sunoco.

[shaneracefan48]

just got my car saturday, filled it up today. 24 dollars, 32mpg =) but i drove around town and on highway

[thowes24]

Dang, I don't see how you guys are getting such good gas mileage. I'm doing good to get to 300 miles on a tank. But then again, I typically let it rev up into the 4-5k rpm range. And that's 100% city driving too. My mileage is normally about 25-30 mpg.

[JerryDeluxe]

i got 34.14 mpg and thats 375.6 miles driven divided by 11.004 gallon.

[bethomas]

Howdy Y'all... newbie here.

Background...after a couple of cavaliers, one 380+HP Toyota MR2 turbo, one 300+ toyota MR2 turbo, a 96 maxima and a 2000 maxima i have fallen into a 2009 EX coupe.

The most recent maximas have been absolutely bullet proof. Both of them had over 185,000 miles on them when I got rid of them and never had to do anything more than normal maintenance. Since I have a 42 miles commute each way to work, running a car that only gets around 20-23 mpg (depending on the time of year) and takes at least mid grade (recommended is premium, but I didn’t notice any difference in MPG’s so couldn’t justify the cost difference) I have be waiting for the chance to move on to something that is a little better on the fuel economy. I was originally looking at Mazda 3’s and most civics with decent mileage were out of the price I wanted to spend on a highway beater. Then I found this civic, as stated above with 30,000 miles on it and the manual transmission I had been missing for too long.

I have had a chance to run a few tanks through the car and have gotten the following:

28.45 mpg
30.30 mpg
30.25 mpg
29.12 mpg (lots of idling)

Then the temperature has started to warm up (I am NW of Chicago), raised the tire psi to 35, and have changed my cruising speed from 75 to 67 mpg on the highway, shift before 2500 RPM and I have gotten the following on the last two tanks:

34.38 mpg (414.8 miles per tank, ran it to just below the no bars - filled with 12.064 gallons))
34.17 mpg (400.8 miles per tank, ran it to one bar left… this could have been a 440 mile tank based on how far I can go per bar and what I have found that I can squeeze out of it after no bars are left – and no, haven’t run out of gas yet - filled with 11.728 gallons))

And I can only imagine these will go up as the temperature changes and we get off the crappy winter gas.
Also, I can’t always get to the same gas station, nor the same pump, but never really noticed much difference in that with the maximas and keeping records for over 4 years. It might vary a little bit from pump to pump, but for my purposes this is close enough. I like to go as long as possibly between fillups, but usually try and get gas in Rockford (where I work) as opposed to Huntley (where I live) as it is $0.10 or more a gallon out here, and they don’t get the crappy Chicago blends of gas.

So far I have been pretty impressed with the car… this is a 10 mpg improvement over my last maxima.

My trip is 2.5 miles on 4 lane/2 lane road with 5 stop lights, 6 miles of two lane roads with one stop sign and one stop light, 30 miles of 4 lane interstate, 2.5 miles of 4 lane road with 9 stop lights.

Thanks for all the hints and tricks in the thread!

[whtdvl]

When you run out of bars you still have nearly +2gal of fuel left so you can still go quite a ways without running out of fuel. Downside is that if you don't have a scanguage or some other type of tool to monitor fuel levels it would be easy to run out.

For as short of a trip as you have and winter gas in the car it sounds like you are doing good, keep it up

[bethomas]

Yea, that is what i have figured out as well based on how far i have taken it past the no bars left so far.

oh, and i recounted today... 11 stop lights on the last 2.5 miles going to work and coming from work. and i always seem to hit all of them!

and yes, compared to you a round trip of 84-85 miles is short.

[whtdvl]

My bad about the short trip comment I saw the shorter distances and kinda missed the 30 miles on the interstate lol

that is quite a commute, I think I was making my own cliff notes by being a lazy reader

[codypet]

I was kinda curious about the winter fuel mixture still. I just got 413 miles and 35mpg on my 30% hwy 70% city run this last time. This is also my first tank where my Scan Gauge is fully calibrated. I love that thing. Only problem is the velcro keeps falling off the gauge and it never stays mounted.

[Louisville Slugger]

Date: 03/26/10.
$/Gallon: $2.778.
Gallons Purchased: 9.922.
Miles Driven: 342.3.
MPG: 34.5.
L/100km: 6.8.
Total Cost: $27.56
$/Mile: $0.08.
Station: Sunoco.

Yes the gas pump actually said $2.778, but the sign said $2.779. I was actually charged $2.778 according to my receipt. I did much more highway driving this tank when I went to visit a friend. Plus the temperature has been increasing these last few weeks. We have hit 60s and even in the 70s in some areas. My ScanGauge was dead on this time in terms of how many gallons I used. ScanGauge reported 9.9 gallons used and I put in 9.922 gallons,

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted by Louisville Slugger

Yes the gas pump actually said $2.778, but the sign said $2.779. I was actually charged $2.778 according to my receipt. I did much more highway driving this tank when I went to visit a friend. Plus the temperature has been increasing these last few weeks. We have hit 60s and even in the 70s in some areas. My ScanGauge was dead on this time in terms of how many gallons I used. ScanGauge reported 9.9 gallons used and I put in 9.922 gallons,

Don't spend all of those one-tenths of a cent in one place!

[whtdvl]

so far this year I've done more stop and go city driving than normal, still happy with the results though

3/1/10
541.8 miles
12.006 gal
43.46 mpg

3/18/2010
569.2
12.451
45.71

3/22
456.1
11.28
40.43

3/26
449.3
10.33
43.49

my goal for this year is to avg 500mi/tank...so far I am at 513.6/tank but the year is still young..I also shoot to keep every tank in the +11gal fill-up range as I would like my fill-up intervals to be as spaced out as possible, BUT this doesn't always work out due to anticipated trips or driving conditions that I feel it necessary to fill-up early..

^ I probably sound really up tight about my car...I guess I am, but I've found entertainment in driving +30k miles/year

[advan]

10 Civic LX-S manual

Engine miles: 700
Average MPG: 32.3
Commute: 60 % city / 40% highway