hey fellas, i have a 2K max w/ 5 spd tranny. Recently, My MPG has been going down. I use to drive around 400 miles before the low fuel light comes on. Now, The it comes on at around 340 miles. i have 54K miles on the car. I reset my trip everytime i fill up gas to see how far I go every fill up. But recently, I'm losing about 60 miles per tank fill up. what do you think is wrong. Need new spark plugs? Need to clean throttle body? let me know. Thanks

 

My auto '02 SE has started doing the same lately... last wednesday mpg dropped enormously, like from 26.9 mpg to 15 mpg. My car was hella low on gas, so could it be the fuel pump having to work harder/gas is sloshing around/ or low pressure in fuel lines? I filled it up and it's slowly climbing back up and it's at 23.1 now. I've heard of other people having lower mpg and loss of power, but I'm not feeling any loss of power. I'll just wait it out and see if it rises back up to normal (27ish), and if not I guess I'll reset ECU
Any bright ideas fellas?

 

Mines not losing any power at all. It started dropping tremendoudly when the weather changed. Dont know if thats whats causing it or something else but I'm changing the sparkplugs tomorrow anyway to hopefully fix this.

 

Hey Mike! Besides the plugs, check your air filter too. A dirty filter will kill MPG also. Since we both have 2000's, do you still have the original coils? If you do, notice a slight pinging on acceleration that was not there before? Hope to see you at the next meet too!

Mike

 

There are many factors that lower your MPG:

cold weather
octane rating
air filter
motor oil
spark plug
dirty throttle body
flat tires
tires out of alignment
etc....


~limsandy

 

Colder weather (takes longer to warm up), winter gas, low tire pressure (remember pressure will drop as it gets cold outside), and failing ignition coils can all result in lower MPG.