Does the 3.5 burn more gas over the 3.0 since it is faster? My maxima runs & rides great but the mpg stinks. Living in an urban city with stop & go traffic & having to use premium is one of my very few gripes. My 99 trans am with an ls1 and 3.42 gears is not that much worse. Just curious if there is a difference between the two motors?

 

It should.
It's half a liter bigger.

Just curious myself
according to KBB
2000 is 18/26, auto
2003 is 17/24 auto.

btw, my 2dr bmw @ 70mph windows down vs windows up it gets 3mpg worse.
Just saying the 3.0 doesn't look like it saves allot of gas vs 3.5, on paper.

How much you get per tank?
Mine is about 300mi give or take depending if I got the a/c running.

 

honestly in real world driving there is not much difference, my buddy with an i30 who drives similar conditions gets around the same as my '03 Maxima

 

Thanks for the info, I wonder no more lol. I do think I get around 17 but I havent checked the actual numbers in a while.

 

I've owned a gen 4 for a few months so not a TOTALLY fair comparison but the gen 4 fared way better with stop and go traffic... But with my driving being mostly highway the difference was negligible.

 

I know it took me a whole tank to get from downtown Indianapolis to downtown Detroit for me. The drive was a right at about 300 miles for me, so at a full tank of 18.5 gallons, I got a little over 16mpg at 80mph average on that trip.

Oddly enough though, I really did run out of gas right after I got there. I stopped at another Max owners place to pick up exhaust piping and realized I was out of gas shortly after leaving that night when it began to snow and traffic got really bad. It was a really close call by the time I actually managed to get off the interstate to get to a gas station. Multiple wrecks every mile. Awful.

300 miles isn't too bad.

I get terrible mileage stop and go.

 

^
I drive the Maxima in 3 (until about 70 km/h) or I just drive fast +15-20 km/h in D.. Seems to be only way to get decent city mileage during winter time ><

 

it might not matter since my maf was bad at the time
but went camping 95% freeway there.

Filled up before leaving, took a pic morning after I got home.
It did close to 400mi that tank.

 

This thread sucks....

 

16 mpg on a 300 mile trip? Assuming a decent amount of highway driving? Oh h3ll no. Your car needs SOME sort of tune-up. Primary O2s, Bad MAF. Spark plugs? Something.

 

not with that extra gear

 

IIRC, my 3.5 did much worse than the 3.0 city driving, but with the 6th gear, was pretty darn impressive when it came to highway driving and road trips.

 

I consistently get 400mi/ tank, 4AT, 03, 158k miles, 440 injectors. Owait this isn't an MPG thread?

In any case, I agree, the 6MT get awesome mileage and puts it right up there with the VQ30's MPG.