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Being a car journalist, I investigate a lot of things connected with fuel consumption of your
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car. After writing like hundreds of articles about this, I figured out five things that we do to have
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poor gas mileage. I will not tell you about fuel injector problems, filter problems, all the things
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that can affect the gas mileage, but they are technical. I will tell you about some mistakes
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that we do, and we get bad fuel consumption. So first of all it's poor maintenance. If you don't
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maintain your car, you may just skip the time when the engine starts misfiring, or when the filter is
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completely clogged, or when something is wrong with the injectors. When you take your car to
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a dealership or to some independent mechanic for maintenance, they will understand that something
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is wrong before it affects your vehicle, so this keeps your car running as efficiently as it can.
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The second factor that surprisingly affects gas mileage is the thick oil. So
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if the oil is not correct, it has different viscosity than is needed for this engine,
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the engine is going to struggle, the engine is going to have a lot of problems working,
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and I don't say now about the wear of this engine, about the possible fatal issues with the engine,
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but the gas mileage will also suffer. So if, instead of using 0W-20 oil, you use 10W-40 oil,
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this will affect the gas mileage, and it will also destroy the engine. You can't ignore this
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fact. The third thing is tire pressure. I know the all the modern cars have this tire pressure
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monitor and the sensor in the wheels. But if your car doesn't have this, or even if it has this,
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check the tire pressure manually from time to time, because if your tire pressure is
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low the resistance of the car rolling is huge, and it's going to affect the gas mileage. Not
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as bad as some other things, but still, these tire pressure monitors are not always reliable,
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and you can't always rely on this information. So just check it manually to make sure that the
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tire pressure is perfect in each wheel of your car. Then the next thing is wheel alignment.
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Your wheels need to be positioned properly, so they have to stand like this in most cars,
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and in this case, you will have proper gas mileage. But when the wheel alignment is even
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slightly changed, so your wheels will stand like this, like this, like this, this will affect your
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gas mileage significantly. Obviously, because of the resistance when your wheels turn, when your
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car rolling, there is resistance, and your engine needs to use more power to pull your car forward.
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And the fifth thing is unnecessary payload. So every like 100 lb of weight will add about
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1% of fuel consumption to your vehicle. It's "about" because it depends on the engine size,
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engine power. It depends on the weight of your car because for trucks, for heavy-duty trucks,
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it will not work obviously. But for all passenger cars especially with modern small turbo engines
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this will be the issue that can add a lot to the fuel consumption. So you will be
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paying more for every mile you drive if you are carrying like 100 lb of additional equipment in
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your car that you don't need and you don't use, like toolbox for example, that you never use.
