Automotive Articles

Everyone says that we need to get better gas mileage in all of our vehicles, but not very many people truly understand what is necessary to make that happen. So they focus their efforts on one or two areas, without ever realizing that the best gas mileage improvement plans have five different angles to them, or spokes of a wheel. Sure, working on just one aspect of getting better gas mileage at a time will get you some results, it’s not until you work on all five parts of the problem simultaneously that the really good gains in gas mileage happen. Let’s look at each of these aspects briefly.  

1. The Driver’s Piece Of The Puzzle. Believe it or not, the driving style of the driver can significantly impact a vehicle’s gas mileage. When you have stop and go driving around the city, you can’t help but get lower mileage than you will when driving at a constant speed down the highway. Treating every stoplight like it’s the next biggest race of your life, and stopping suddenly too at the next light, both cut into your vehicle’s overall gas mileage. But staying under the posted speed limit, finding a route with the fewest traffic stoplights, coasting to a stop each time you have to stop, and not launching your vehicle off the line when the light changes, all these will help you get better gas mileage in your car or truck.  

2. The Actual Vehicle. Are you keeping it tuned up correctly? Are the tires aired up right? Is the oil in the engine ready to be changed? Are you giving your car good maintenance? Are you keeping the paint job decent? Careful vehicle maintenance is one of the best ways to keep your vehicle’s gas mileage in top condition.

  3. The Fuel Your Engine Is Burning. Good gas gets better mileage than bad gas. And contaminated fuel will cost you in repairs as well as lower mileage. Tweaking the fuel to burn better than standard gasoline or diesel fuel does, and insisting upon always using high quality fuel, these are both excellent ways to increase your gas mileage.  

4. The Air Going In. Believe it or not, there are also ways to improve the air flow going into the engine that will help the fuel burn better, and likewise improve your gas mileage. Cool air contains a higher Oxygen content in it, and expands more when heated, than hot air, once inside the engine. Humid air also absorbs more heat and thus expands more than dry air does inside the cylinder (also better efficiency). Clean air burns better than dusty or smoggy air. Pressurized air has more Oxygen in it than straight air does. And so on and so on.

  5. The Exhaust.There are even things you can do to your exhaust system to improve your gas mileage. You can do things like upsize your exhaust pipes, oversize your catalytic converter and muffler combo, add a tailpipe turbocharger, or even find ways to recycle the extra heat found in the exhaust system, all to improve your vehicle’s mileage.

By expanding our efforts to include a “whole-car” approach, and addressing all five facets of the ‘better gas mileage’ equation, we can significantly improve the mileage of almost any sized combustion-based engine that we want to.  

    If you really want to dig into understanding this ’whole car’ approach to improving gas mileage, get the exhaustive ebook “Over 50 Ways to Get Better Gas Mileage” available at http://www.HowToGetBetterGasMileage.com, as presented by the staff at http://www.EvergreenGasLabs.com.