Gas mileage on my truck.. UPDATE

[BrunoPuntzJones]

Originally posted by: Citrix

Originally posted by: WinkOsmosis

Originally posted by: Down4U

Originally posted by: flood
your MPG will also depend on how you drive your car.

I don't drive her aggressively. I may engage the over-drive one or two times if I need to, but otherwise I'm rather conservative.

OH MY GOD. Overdrive is a gear. Not using it is why your mileage is so crappy.

How the hell can people not realize what overdrive is???

Yip overdrive is your highway gear. it puts less strain on your engine and improves gas milage. But NEVER use your overdrive while towing a trailer. When you step on the gas and "engage the overdrive" is wrong. you are not engaging the overdrive, you are slipping the truck into a lower gear and DISENGAGING the overdrive.

also that is sh*tty gas milage on your jeep. My GMC 1/2 ton 350 V8 gets 18 on the highway and 15 in the city.

Yeah I knew a guy that didn't know that. We were going to a hockey game about 200 miles away. He fills up with gas as we head out. About 150 miles later he says we need to stop and fill up again. I'm like WTF??? He says his Jeep burns gas like a bitch.

So we get back on Interstate and I look at his dash and he's running like 4000 RPM. Dumbass had it in Drive the whole time. Asked why he wasn't in OD and he said that it was for towing or something like that. I told him to shift into OD and he dropped to like 2200. He'd been driving like that for a couple of years. No telling how much gas he wasted and how much trouble he'll have pushing the engine so hard.

 

[FrustratedUser]

Originally posted by: Down4U
So I put my truck through the test to try and figure out her true gas mileage these days. Here's what I've come up with.

This is when I filled her up on the first of March. It took almost $33 (What I usually pay more or less), or almost 17 gallons of octane 93 out of a 23 gallon tank. I reset the trip odometer to zero as seen here.

Today, the seventh of March, I had to make a trip to the gas station again, since I had a quarter tank left. The trip odometer reading is seen here. I didn't have the camera with me today, but it came out to $33 even, or a little over 17 gallons at the pump (probably 17.010).

So if my math is right, the jeep having consumed about 17 gallons of gas over 198.8 miles worth of city driving, she rates roughly about 11.6 MPG. I guess that's not that off from the rated 15 MPG that Chrysler gives for my jeep, but still kinda sucks for a six cylinder engine rated for 185 hp at 4600 rpm.

I'm sure an engine with 113k miles on it like mine is prone to lose compression, and so it'll probably lose some of it's response and burn gas less efficiently. How do I help improve that?

Sounds about right to me. It's a Jeep (4WD?).
My sedan gets around 22-24 mpg measured the same way you do and its a 3.8l V6. 26.5 mpg highway driving to San Diego

 

[Down4U]

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones

Yeah I knew a guy that didn't know that. We were going to a hockey game about 200 miles away. He fills up with gas as we head out. About 150 miles later he says we need to stop and fill up again. I'm like WTF??? He says his Jeep burns gas like a bitch.

So we get back on Interstate and I look at his dash and he's running like 4000 RPM. Dumbass had it in Drive the whole time. Asked why he wasn't in OD and he said that it was for towing or something like that. I told him to shift into OD and he dropped to like 2200. He'd been driving like that for a couple of years. No telling how much gas he wasted and how much trouble he'll have pushing the engine so hard.

Does he have the V8? I have the inline six cylinder version of the GC. From what someone else explained, I guess the overdrive is always engaged on mine unless I step on the gas deep enough to disengage it. I thought it was the other way around, OD always disengaged unless you need some pick-up momentarily, in which it shifts to a lower gear to speed up, hence the term "over-drive." Maybe I'm confused.

 

[JEDI]

ok, when you put *UPDATE* in the thread title, please update the original post to the updated info

 

[Down4U]

Originally posted by: BrunoPuntzJones

So we get back on Interstate and I look at his dash and he's running like 4000 RPM. Dumbass had it in Drive the whole time. Asked why he wasn't in OD and he said that it was for towing or something like that.

That's real wicked that he's been running that engine like that for long. My GC already sounds like it's struggling when she's up at 2800 RPM cruising down a highway at 90 MPH, and I tend not to do that for long. There's nothing better than to have her cruising along at 55 MPH while the engine revs at 1500 RPM. It almost feels like the engine isn't running at all from how quiet and smooth it is.

 

[Down4U]

Originally posted by: XFILE
ok, when you put *UPDATE* in the thread title, please update the original post to the updated info

I can't find my older thread on this subject.

 

[Down4U]

Originally posted by: FrustratedUser

Sounds about right to me. It's a Jeep (4WD?).
My sedan gets around 22-24 mpg measured the same way you do and its a 3.8l V6. 26.5 mpg highway driving to San Diego

Nah, it's a 4x4, and the front axle is not engaged most of the time. You lucky guy!