How to make your car consume less fuel

1. Drive Sensibly

Aggressive driving (speeding, rapid acceleration and braking) wastes gas. It can lower your gas mileage by 33% at highway speeds and by 5% around town. Sensible driving is also safer for you and others, so you may save more than gas money. While each vehicle reaches its optimal fuel economy at a different speed (or range of speeds), gas mileage usually decreases rapidly at speeds above 50 mph. Use Cruise control to maintain constant speed, this is know to save fuel in most cases.

2. Replace a Clogged Air Filter

When your Air filter is very dirty and blocked, it can cause excessive fuel consumption. This chokes off air and creates a condition that is called a  “rich” mixture – too much gas being burned for the amount of air, which both wastes gas and causes the engine to lose power.

3. Remove Excess Weight

Avoid keeping unnecessary items in your vehicle, especially heavy ones. An extra 100 pounds in your vehicle could reduce your MPG by about 1%.5 The reduction is based on the percentage of extra weight relative to the vehicle’s weight and affects smaller vehicles more than larger ones.

4. Engine Oil

Use recommended Motor grade oil. In most cases Motor Grade oil type is written on the cap for filling engine oil. For Example do not use 10W-30 Oil on an Engine designed to use 5W-20. Also change your Engine oil often, Recommended duration is every 5000 miles for most Vehicles.

5. Avoid Idling

Idling can use a quarter to a half gallon of fuel per hour, depending on engine size and air conditioner (AC) use. Turn off your engine when your vehicle is parked. It only takes about 10 seconds worth of fuel to restart your vehicle.

6. Keep Tires Properly Inflated

Yes. Under inflated tyres can reduce your fuel economy, you can increase your gas mileage by 3.3% by keeping tyres properly inflated. Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by 0.3% for every 1 psi drop in pressure of all four tires. Properly inflated tires are safer and last longer.

7. Spark Plugs, Coil and SparkPlug Wires.

Have your mechanic check spark plugs, dirty of faulty spark plugs can cause bad gas mileage. Also in some car always check spark plug wires Coil for faults and leakages.Checking and changing these also improves engine combustion and better acceleration.

8. Check and Fix Error Codes

Error codes in the car appears on the dashboard for example the check engine light. Check Engine lights mean several codes, therefore have your mechanic scan and fix these errors. Errors like O2 Sensor malfunction, EGR (Exhaust Gas Recirculation) Valve malfunction, Evaporation Emission Valve Malfunction are fuel waster, they need to be fixed promptly.

9. Bad Transmission (Gearbox)

Bad Transmission symptoms like delayed shifting waste fuel. When you notice any unusual behaviour  in your transmission, fix it immediately. Apart from fuel economy, this optimises your car transmission.