RuMax96

Hey, i just got my 05 max about a month ago (woo hoo) and i'm wondering what kind of miles per gallon are you guys averaging. I pretty much do "city" driving and i'm at 18.7 right now, and it seems to be dropping =( just wondering how you guys are doing.

thanks

paul

viguera

iTrader: (1)

Don't sweat the mileage on the car... you're gonna get anywhere from "assy" in heavy traffic to 27-28+ on a long road trip with no stops.

The MPG/MPH counters are cummulative, so if whatever you're getting today will be affected by the driving conditions until you never reset it. Basically every light that you stop at and every time you leave the car sitting with the engine running keeps the clock ticking... it's no big deal, really. After a few weeks you'll get used to the car and you'll know better than the gauges when it's time to get gas or how well you're doing with mileage...

MAXY-NOT-L8

I was getting the same thing. I know have 2500 miles and I'm starting to get better gas mileage. I have been doing some highway traveling, so I'm averaging about 23 mpg. When traveling thru the city, it's about 19-21. That all depends on the stop and go too. Hang in there, once your car "breaks" in, the mpg will get better!

RideTuner

iTrader: (13)

It depends on how you drive too. The gas prices are ridiculous so I drive like a grandma now. I get 26-27 mpg average..about 60/40 city/hwy

UnMaTcHeD

iTrader: (2)

Well that's good to know, because I currently have about 350 mile on the car and get about 11 miles per gallon.

msoemax

make sure that at every fill up you reset both the trip computer and the MPG computer. If you do this after every fill up you will see that you get dead on results. What's nice about the trip computer is that you can see how long your engine was running vs how fast your avg speed was. This always helps out. As I posted somewhere else on another mileage thread

AVG MPH------AVG MPG
00-20-----17-20
21-25-----21-23
26-40-----24-25
40-55~60-----26-30
60+-----28

I got these numbers from my driving habits and they seem to be dead nuts on for a bunch of people on the ORG.

If you can keep the RPM's under 2K you will get great gas mileage 28-30 MPG
2k-2.5k 25-28 MPG
2.5k-3K 25-28 on the highway.

Gas mileage depends on speed and stop/go. Use these numbers a general guide.

UnMaTcHeD

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for the information.

NashMax

Tire pressure also changes MPG. With stock 18" rims I would bump the PSI up to 35 to protect the rims and increase your gas mileage.

SilverMax_04

Good advice. I too run my tires at 35 psi.

You should get your best mileage in top gear at about 60 mph. Anything faster than that will cause the mileage to drop, but only slowly until the RPMs get above about 3 K. And, obviously, it cost mileage every time you have to stop.

RuMax96

thanks for the info guys, hopefully it will get better, but it is a lot of stop and go, oh well.

blackpaladin67

Get a grounding kit .....LOL ...na I'm serious ..

James_05SE

I still don't know why Nissan geared the 5-speed-auto Max to be at 3000 RPM while cruising at 80 MPH. That right there is why the mileage is so crappy. It should be about 400-500 RPM lower so that at 65-70 MPH you are at 2450-2600 RPM. You figure they would use the 5th gear better for cruising and bringing the revs down. I know the Max has to torque to handle it.

_StangGT_

Thats funny a guy that was driving a 6gen maxima was laughing at me at the gas station the other day when gas prices were high, I guess he had nothing to laugh at, his car is worst than mine on gas.

mrlee2005

Same here on my 2005, I'am just at 2k miles and my mileage as been increasing slowly each week. Kinda scary at first though

blackpaladin67

Mileage is crap on new motors till you put like 10K on them and they settle down , also I heard that the factory actually has a preset in the computers to run them rich for the first 10k as well to let them settle.

Tek-Niq

iTrader: (3)

you need more miles on the car for it to give that info, that 11 will keep going up..

with heavy 22 inch rims and a heavy foot cause I go quick everyday will give ya 18mpg.. take it slow like I did before and you get about 21 overall..

you do have to reset the mpg meter when you go on long trips to get accurate results also, cause i bet you are going by the overall mpg on the car..

ramberg

iTrader: (29)

How many miles do you get per gallon. Your car is a eight ant a GT which has about 300 HP. You have to be wasting more gas.

You should check out this site, it a mustang club site.

https://www.mustangclubcenter.com/home.cfm

SilverMax_04

I have a manual 6-speed and at 3 K RPMs the car goes 82 mph. I agree with you that these high RPMs do not help with mileage. My view of why the Max is geared this way was to create a drive train where at 55 mph the engine RPMs in top gear are 2 K. This way you (or the auto trannie) don't have to down shift to get reasonable acceleration.

I would prefer Nissan had the gearing such that the 2 K RPM speed in top gear was almost 70 mph (not 55 mph). This would certainly give better mileage and IMO still reasonable acceleration from 55 mph -- by down shifting.

JiuJitsuThug

iTrader: (1)

Mine has always gotten really crappy city gas mileage - usually 17-18mpg... Highway is alot better though...

Elimackman

I average around 22 mpg around the city. I can't really complain.

install30

All depends on who drives the car....if I drive, I normally get around 18 mpg....if my wife drives, she averages around 21mpg.....(city driving).....on the highway normally 28 mpg with either of us driving.....I guess I have a lead foot....

dopestar129

I have about 29,000 miles on my 04 max and I average 21.5 mpg. I do pretty much all city driving. The mileage DEFINITELY gets better as you put more miles on your car. I was averaging about 18.5 when I first got the car.

install30

I've only got 10,500 miles on my Max so far.....

Elimackman

The MPG gets better with the increase of mileage. I've had a hard time noticing any change with different driving styles. I prefer to drive with the tiptronic feature and can't really tell a decrease or increase of MPG using it.

04BlackMaxx

I get 25MPG with my combined driving pretty consistantly.

Spoolin

Damn you guys are getting good MPG i got 300 miles on my max and get 14.5 wtf maybe im triptronicing too much GEC!!!!

Tek-Niq

iTrader: (3)

you need alot of miles for it get a better average...

Blaximus

HA... i got 300k on my Max too... AND 14.5 MPG... it probably has alot to do with the fact that our babies are still babies. I'm sure it'll improve once we break her in alil.

My first post!!

Playadave

04 SE - Los Angeles

17.5 City
24 Highway

Average I've been getting since I bought the car in Feb 04

maX5

iTrader: (4)

wow i get like 14 mpg according to the computer and i got like 1200 miles on it

Majestic_MAx05

iTrader: (2)

Im getting 16mpg in city driving here in LA, beats the 9mpg i was getting in my 03 ram

thebear

The truest indicator of gas mileage is not found at each fill-up. It should be the actual miles driven over the course of several months divided by the total gallons used. I keep a small notebook in my car and record the date, odometer (not the trip odo) and gallons. Every few months (or when I am about five lines from the bottom of the page) I do the calculation. That way, if you put in $10 worth or fill it, it doesn't make any difference. Don't forget that the first `fill' only establishes the start mileage and should not be included in the gallon total. Even if you do not fill all the way the first time, after 500 gallons the error becomes insignificant in the calculation (20 gallons divided by 500 gallons = 0.04 or 4%). You will waste more than that idling at a traffic light for a few minutes.

SilverMax_04

I've owned my 04 with 6-speed since May of 03 and now have over 38.5 K miles on her. It took about 4 K miles for the engine to break-in and stop burning so much motor oil. After that the mileage improved somewhat.

I find that the computer mileage over time is about the same as the manual calculations. I assume the difference between the two is caused by not being able to fill the tank to the exact level each time I buy gasoline.

The mileage on the interstate and back roads is much better than when driving around town. You should keep track of both the mpg and the average mph (the computer gives you that second number, too). You will find that lower speeds give you worse mileage -- because it calculates average speed to include the time your engine is running by the car is not moving.

My best computer mileages:
_ Date ___ Car Odom __ mpg ___ Avg mph
4-15-04 __ 15,504 ____ 30.9 ___ 67
7-15-04 __ 19,415 ____ 30.5 ___ 67
7-15-04 __ 19,663 ____ 30.3 ___ 67
7-15-05 __ 19,923 ____ 29.9 ___ 65
3-11-05 __ 28,748 ____ 30.1 ___ 50
3-19-05 __ 29,144 ____ 29.5 ___ 50

This past summer my mileage was not this good on the highway, ranging from a high of 27.9 (60 mph average) to a low of 24.1 (69 mph average). I attribute this to burning more gasoline with ethanol (which reduces mileage) and the higher air temps. My max gets its best mileage cruising at about 65 to 70 mph (which averages less than those speeds) with few to no stops.

Around town I get between 21.1 (20 mph average) to 27.3 (37 mph average). The more highway driving you get around town and the less street driving with stop and go, the better your town mileage will be -- and the higher the average speed as well.

SlammerBC

If I drive hard which I love to do around the city I get 18 - 18.7, If I tone it down slightly I get high 19's low 20's. I don't have any info for freeway yet.

Also is the MPH computer set properly? I thought we had a 20 gallon tank yet at 21mph it list miles to drive as 330.

jmo

Hey fellas...just joined this tonight. Good info on here.

I've been curious as to what MPG other Maxima owners were getting. Street mileage is not great...but I expect that.

However, highway mileage is great in my eyes. When I get on the Interstate I reset the counter and drive for a while...I can get 28-30 MPG cruising at 75. I've wondered how accurate that is. FYI, I live in Tampa, FL...the interstates are quite smooth and there are no hills in the area...so it's all flat.

I'm happy w/ the mileage...and everyone is right..it gets better the more your car breaks in. I'm over 29K after buying the car in May 04.

NIKV69

I do mostly highway driving so I have been averaging 24 MPG. Damn fuel prices!

rcasapao

I got a little under 15,000 miles on my 04 and I get on average 22-24 city/ 27-27.7 hwy. I have to agree that the tire pressure and driving habits have a lot to do with my gas mileage. I average around 60-74 mph on highway.

supernet33

i have 800 miles on my max 06 and i get about 15.2 mpg

SilverMax_04

In post # 32, thebear makes some good points about calculating the average MPG rather than the MPG from fill-up to fill-up. However, because highway driving gets higher mileage than city driving, the amount of highway driving in each average calculation will have a big effect on your MPG results.

But taking his good advice, I have calculated the average mileage obtained during my major highway trips with my Max. For these calculations, I did not use any gasoline gallons in the calculation if the average speed for that purchase was less than 40 mph (the car odometer reading is at the end of each trip).

_Date ___ Trip __ Car Odom ___ Total Miles _ Avg MPG __ Avg MPH
July 03 __ CO-IL ___ 2,847 ______ 1035 _____ 27.0 ______65.6
July 03 __ IL-SC ___ 3,795 _______ 744 _____ 28.8 ______ 61.2
July 03 __ SC-WI __ 5,833 _______ 1684 _____ 28.0 _____ 46.5
Aug 03 __ IL-CO ___ 7,042 _______ 1036 _____ 26.9 _____ 67.2
Oct. 03 __ CO-IA __ 9,197 ________ 951 _____ 26.4 _____ 58.6
Nov 03 __ IL-CO __ 10,605 _______ 1034 _____ 23.6 _____ 64.7
Dec 03 __ CO-IA __ 12,179 ________ 910 _____ 26.3 _____ 67.0
Jan 04 __ IA-CO __ 13,459 ________ 889 _____ 22.7 _____ 69.7
Above a 2-day trip with below zero temps and head wind the first day.
Apr 04 __ CO-IA __ 16,075 ________ 888 _____ 28.9 _____ 69.2
May 04__ IA-CO __ 17,427 ________ 889 _____ 26.3 _____ 69.3
Above a 2-day trip with a head wind the first day.
July 04 __ CO-SC __ 19,923 ______ 1633 ______ 29.6 _____ 65.9
Aug 04_ SC-WI-CO_ 22,893 ______ 2385 ______ 28.1 _____ 58.3
Above includes a little city driving in Chicago & Madison.
Nov 04 __ CO-IA __ 25,332 _______ 902 ______ 26.1 _____ 71.6
Dec 04 __ IA-CO __ 26,622 _______ 894 ______ 25.8 _____ 68.3
May 05 __ CO-IL __ 30,930 ______ 1002 ______ 28.8 _____ 66.1
May 05 __ IA-CO __ 32,214 ______ 919 _______ 27.1 _____ 67.3
July 05 __ CO-SC __ 34,371 _____ 1478 _______ 27.3 _____ 65.9
Aug 05_ SC-MN-CO_ 37,506 _____ 2401 _______ 25.6 _____ 58.2
Above includes a little city driving in a number of cities.

When you notice a strong head wind or side wind, it can obviously reduce your mileage. You are less likely to notice a strong tail wind which will increase your mileage.

DeusExMaxima

iTrader: (1)

Highway mileage seems to be much better than city. I know I can get from Upland to the SF Bay area on less than a tank. The distance is over 400 miles. I think I have driven about 450 miles on a tank when its all highway. In the city, however, its around 18 mpg.