Improve Your Gas Mileage

 Save Gas at the Pump by:

1:   Getting gas in the morning is the best time.  Before the ground temperature starts to warm up will improve gas mileage.  This is because most gas stations have their storage tanks below ground and the gas stations do not have temperature compensation at the pumps.  Gas like everything else is more dense when it is cold.  So when you fill up in the morning you are getting more dense gas in your tank.   As it warms up the gas expands and so if you get gas later in the day it is less dense and you are not getting as much "bang for your buck" literally.  Denser gas has more energy and this is why you will save gas.  This is the same for any type of fuel at the gas station.    

2:    Not letting the gas evaporate will save gas big time.  Have you ever had your service engine light come on and only to learn it was just the gas cap.  Usually it's because the cap was no longer creating a good seal with the tank.  This is a problem because your gas can evaporate pretty quickly and you can be left wondering what happened to all that gas you just got. 

If you are like me going to the gas station right now is terrible.  You want to get out of there as fast as possible so you squeeze the pump as hard as you can so it will pump faster and you can leave that awful place.  Well it turns out that we are doing it all wrong.  Really we should be filling up as slow as we can.  The faster the gas pumps the easier it is for air to get into the tank and take up space and for the gas to evaporate and turn into vapors.  What is even worse is the pumps have a vapor return on the nozzles so not only are you paying for the gas that turns into vapors but its getting pumped back into the storage tanks and resold to you.  On most pumps there is a lever of some kind that lets you pump automatically and not have to hold the trigger.  There is usually more than one stage that you can leave this at.  It is best to use the lowest or slowest one to minimize evaporation.  Another part of this is to try to fill up when you are on half a tank.  This will cut down the time you need to fill and in the process cut down on the amount of gas that can evaporate.  Also it means that there is less air in your tank that contributes to evaporation.  This may not improve gas mileage per say but it will lower the bill at the pump.
 

3:    Buying lower grades of octane or getting the lowest grade octane necessary for your car will not save gas but it will lower your bill quite a bit.  Your manual should say what is recommended for your vehicle.  In most cases it is the lowest grade octane available.  Usual only the high end luxury/sports cars with a high compression ratio need the higher octane fuel.  Despite what the fuel companies have led many to believe, getting the higher octane will not improve gas mileage unless the vehicle was designed for it. The lower octane gas is much cheaper than the higher so don't waist your money. 

4:    Getting clean gas will definitely improve gas mileage.  A good thing to watch out for is a gas truck pumping gas into the station's storage tanks  Do NOT fill up if you see this.  When they pump the gas into the tanks it can cause everything in the tank to get stirred up, including the dirt and other things that usually settle at the bottom.  You do not want any of that in your gas tank.  This also applies to getting good gas.  It is known that some stations have better gas than others.  An easy way to know if you are getting good gas is the price.  If the price seems to good to be true it is!  Getting good quality gas will save gas and money in the long run.  We don't mean go out and buy the most expensive gas you can find but test the different stations and log your results.  Then you can see for yourself if you get better results from different stations.

5: Keeping your tire pressure at the recommended level will save gas even more than you think. Check your tire pressure often.  Some people will tell you to check your tires every time you fill up.  But lets be realistic.  I don't know very many people who will do that, me included.  I would say to do it as often as you can.  Maybe every time you change the oil.  If you change the oil yourself you can make it part of your routine or if you take it to a shop many of those places already do that for you when you get an oil service.  You should just ask if they do it or not and if they don't then ask them to.  Keeping your tires properly inflated will help to improve gas mileage.

a. !!NEW!! An interesting thing that you can do is put nitrogen in your tires instead of compressed air.  This can help more than just save gas.  The nitrogen that gets put in is completely dry, unlike the air it is much less susceptible to the changing temperature of the different seasons.  Your tire pressure will stay much closer to what was originally put in, all year round.  Of course this does not apply if you have a leak.  Also according to what we learned, since nitrogen will keep your tire pressure constant that in turn will help your tires last longer, some reports were up to almost twice as long. The problem we see with this is you have to go to someone else to have this done. If you are conscious and consistent about checking your tire pressure then you don't need to worry about this but if you don't want to check your tire pressure very often then this could be the way to go. It should have the same effect to improve gas mileage as keep your tire inflated properly with air just less maintenance.

Save Gas on the road:

1:    Driving slower is one thing we can do to get better gas mileage.  Slow down, sometimes we are too much in a hurry to get wherever we are going.  We all do it.  Try to get there as fast as we can, but if we would just slow down a little we could save gas pretty easily.  There are 2 main reasons that slowing down will save you gas.  One the faster you go the higher your RPMs (Rotations per Minute).  Each rotation of the cylinder requires gas to be pumped in and used.  So if the car is not going so fast it will not need the RPMs to be so high and you will use less gas.  To get optimal gas mileage you would want to go slowest speed at the highest gear of your car.  This will give the best performance of any vehicle.  It depends on the car but I believe for most cars that ranges from 45 to 55 maybe 65 mph.  Another factor in this is wind resistance.  I know it sounds funny but it is actually a big deal.  The faster you go the more wind resistance you have and the harder your engine has to work to overcome that, which means more gas lower gas mileage.

2:    Being consistent will improve gas mileage.  Many cars these days come with cruise control.  It can actually help save gas if you are consistant.  This is because consistency maximizes momentum.  Accelerating and even worse, high accelerating pedal to the metal, waists gas.  Hard braking or just braking in general also waists gas.  So keeping the speed consistent helps to minimize the need for speeding up and slowing down.  For me I love cruise control, for more than one reason.  Not only does it help save gas it is convenient and I don't have to worry about getting a ticket cause I just set my speed where I know I won't get a ticket.

3:    Using your brakes less will greatly improve gas mileage. Except for hybrids engine breaking uses extra fuel that isn't necessary.  Engine breaking is usually done in cars or trucks that have a manual transmission.  It is where you use a lower gear to slow the car down instead of your brakes.  When the car is put into a lower gear at higher speeds it shoots the RPMs up.  If you put the car into neutral first and then use the breaks it saves gas.  This should not be done on hybrids because they use regenerative brakes to charge the batteries.  Though this does wear the brakes down a little faster than if you had used the engine breaking, but considering that it cost close to the same amount to get a single tank of gas these days as it does to get all four of your brakes done I think I would rather save gas then the breaks.

4:    Coasting is a great way to not use your brakes.  A manual car can be put in neutral for several situations that will help to save gas.  One is while going down hill.  You should be careful with this one because you can easily get going faster than you expected but you can let gravity do most of the work for you on larger down hills instead of your engine.  Also you can put the car in neutral when you are stopping routinely at a light or stop sign.  If you are paying attention to the light ahead, you can put the car in neutral and coast a little and try to time the light so that you don't even have to stop at all.  It is much easier on the engine to speed up from 5 mph than from a stop.  When you are coasting or the car is in neutral the car is basically idling which saves gas and will improve gas mileage.