How My Car Gets 50 Miles Per Gallon

Certainly the title of this article sparks interest in many of us who have cars and trucks and are in need of saving money on gas. Most of us have seen the outrageous claims of increased gas mileage from gadgets to additives. I stumbled on how to make my car get more gas mileage by accident. The car gas mileage was pretty good really. Most times I was getting over 300 miles to a tank of gas. So I was pretty happy about that. Going back and forth to work everyday I probably had to fill up twice a month. Gas was less than $3.00 a gallon and if my tank was bone dry it would take right around 11 gallons . I made sure my little car was tuned up, I regularly changed and checked the oil and greased anything that needed to be greased myself. I kept an eye on the tire pressure because I know this also can make a big difference in your gas mileage.

The car has factory air conditioning which was non-functional but there was a belt that drove the unit. So basically it was spinning for nothing. I kind of wanted air conditioning because the Florida summers are hot. More like toasting, But I drove to work in the early morning and returned in the early evening, so having air conditioning wasn't critical. My little car had issues as many older cars do but they were issues I could live with. It was my surf car, I took it to the beach everyday because I was a lifeguard. It had plenty of sand in it and surf wax from dragging around my surfboards.

Well since I didn't really need the air conditioning I disconnected the belt to it. As I was doing this I noticed that the power steering line was about to break. I wondered how hard it would be to steer without a power steering pump. I also figured that I did not even need the air conditioning unit in the car or the power steering pump. They were heavy! I also looked around my car and took out all the stuff I did not need that was heavy. Well my wife couldn't drive it anyways she doesn't drive stick I figured it might be kind of hard for her to steer anyways. Also I figured I only had 5 turns and I was at work. How hard could it be? So I disconnect the power steering and the air conditioning the same day. I re-routed the AC belt to only spin the water pump and alternator. When you do this you need to pull the radio fuse and turn the ignition on. If you do not the car wont start again. Of course I am talking about my car your car will have different requirements to re set your computer.

I know you are wondering why I did this and how the heck I knew to do it. I did it to reset the computer on the car. I learned how to do it from the manual I had purchased for my car. Seems like its always a good idea to purchase a repair manual for your car. Even if you have no plans on doing one single repair to your car it is still nice to know what things are called and maybe what is wrong with your car in general when you take it in for a repair. Way less of a chance of getting taken advantage of if you know some terminology and have read over the section of the car that may need some work.

Well anyway after fussing around with the little car for a few hrs. I started it back up. It seemed to start and run better almost instantly. It was hard to move the steering wheel if I wasn't moving but when the car was moving it wasn't bad at all. So I proceeded to drive the car with-out power steering or air conditioning to work everyday. I did not notice that it was getting better mileage at first I did notice it seems to have better pick-up though. I actually thought it might get worse gas mileage because of the increased power I think I was having a bit more fun driving it now than I used to. I even put premium gas in it when I saw it was getting better gas mileage . It really zoomed then! I filled up the tank and told my wife I was going to keep track of the mileage again. When I first figured it out and it was over 50 miles per gallon. I thought I had made a mistake. When I told my friends they did not believe it either. So I kept track for 3 months. I did not use any special driving methods in fact I probably drove it harder than I did before.

Of course I do not recommend that you do what I did. Certainly most of us need a professional mechanic to work on our cars. But the ones I talked to did not believe my car was getting over 50 miles to the gallon. They had no idea how to get such good gas mileage nor did the really care. I was happy to stumble on my little tricks to get better gas mileage. I wanted to share it with you not so you could copy the idea but maybe you might think of some creative ways to save money on gas also?