Trexus

Try switching to another gas station or buy better gas such as Chevron...

Nunyabiz

Well Costco is being sued over it and they are changing their pumps because of it.

http://www.truckflix.com/news_article.php?newsid=6310

http://www.consumerwatchdog.org/ener...?storyId=26454

Try at least 10% reduction in mileage, and its impossible for your car to not see any difference in mileage.
That would be about a 2.5-3MPG loss for my car.

http://zfacts.com/p/436.html



My tires were 3-4PSI under inflated EACH.

That is about a 4% decrease in fuel economy. Which translates to about 1 mpg

http://tirenitrogen.typepad.com/tire...tire-life.html


So that is most of the 6-7 mpg I was losing.

waiting for an extra occasional stop light or 2 might be 1 mpg or so.

I bet by December when its cold and I am not using AC, I am getting a full gallon of gas energy wise and I find some non Ethanol gas my mileage will be right back to 22-24MPG around town.

285exp

Well the points are that no other retailers have temperature compensating pumps either, so it makes no difference that you are buying at Costco, and that the loss of mileage is only around 2% anyway.

Please read that article that you linked to and tell me where it says that using E10 will drop your mileage by 10% It says that ethanol has only 65.5% of the energy content of gasoline. So E10's energy content is:

.90 X 100% = .90
.10 x 65.5% =.0655
.90 + .0655 = .9655

So E10 has 3.45% less energy content than gasoline, not 10%

"For every pound per square inch that all four of a vehicle’s tires are under-inflated, a driver’s gas mileage is lowered by 0.4 percent."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12517107/

.4 x 4 = 1.6%



So, let's say your baseline is 23 mpg.

2% loss due to hot fuel

23 x .98 = 22.54 mpg

3.45% loss due to E10

22.54 x .9655 = 21.76

1.6% loss for underinflation

21.76 x .984 = 21.4

total 1.6 mpg

That's a far cry from 6-7 mpg. And the waiting time at stoplights is not what gets you, it's the starts and the stops. Every time you stop at a light you are converting all that kinetic energy that you had to burn gas to get into heat, and then you have to accelerate all over again.

Something else to consider; if they install temperature compensating pumps, you want to guess what happens when the weather gets cold? Yup, 1% decrease in volume per 15 degrees below standard fuel temperature. And anyway, the 2% gain that you'll get when the fuel cools off in the winter will be pretty much offset by the reduced energy content of winter blend fuel.

http://www.epa.gov/oms/rfgecon.htm

Nunyabiz

Regardless of all your fancy ciphering my MPG is now back to normal.
My last fill up this morning came to 22.89MPG.

That was with normal gas without any ethanol and if I used the AC at all it was very little, been really cool the past 2 weeks.

So ethanol took at least 3-4 mpg (2-3X your claim and even a tiny bit more than what I thought), not using the AC maybe 1 mpg, the other 3 mpg came from properly inflating the tires, changing plugs that had 55,000 miles on them and cleaning the air filter.
These are the "Observable facts" because this is all I have done & changed.

285exp

Why sure it did! I'm sure you drove the exact same route and in exactly the same manner as in your previous trips. What I particularly admire is how you have allocated the savings among the several variables by pulling numbers directly out of your backside. It is a bit odd that E10 causes your mileage to drop by 15-20%, while it has no discernable effect on either of my ES300's or my wifes ES330.

RXGS

iTrader: (2)

E10 affects my car, the performance to, switched gas stations and mpg went up 2. Did mainl highway driving and got up to 26 mpg with 122k miles, before i only had 23 at best

IS350jet

I'm hoping I'm reading that wrong. If you have oil treatment in your gas tank, that's your fuel mileage problem, right there.

Realistically, though, I don't think that's what you meant. If you do, however, have any kind of fuel treatment in your tank, it will affect gas mileage. Run it through your tank, fill up with clean fuel, run that tank out, fill up again, and finally, check your mileage on your third tank. By that time, your fuel system should be pretty clean.
Also, clean your air filter and fill your tires to 32 psi. Those two combined could easily add up to 30%

Nunyabiz

I caught that mistake in my next post after that.
It was Lucas GAS Treatment and yes it probably did cut my MPG down a bit but not the 6-7MPG I was experiencing. My MPG drop was a mixture of things that hit all at once and the Ethanol being the biggest one 3+MPG and everything else being 3+MPG.

285exp

1) The chances that you are getting 22.89 mpg in actual city driving are exactly zero.
2) There is no way that E10 is going to decrease your fuel economy by 15-20% If you can point me to a valid test that shows that it does, I'll be happy to reconsider. And anecdotal evidence proves nothing, so ya'll don't start telling me about how you or your buddy lost 2-4 mpg using E10.

"Figure 15 shows that the fleet average fuel consumption increased with increasing ethanol content; the magnitude of the increase when ethanol increased from 0% to 10% was 1.4%."

http://www.arb.ca.gov/fuels/gasoline...rc_e67_rpt.pdf


Changing or cleaning the air filter will have no effect on fuel economy.

"Despite the filter restrictions, however, no significant changes in fuel economy were observed."

http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/pdfs/...02_26_2009.pdf

Nunyabiz

I just came here to try to figure out why my mileage dropped by 5-7MPG not be called a liar by some A-hole.

I get 22MPG around town and up to 31 straight hwy those are observable facts, why exactly do you think I would sit here and lie about it? What do you think I would gain by doing so?

You are simply an A-hole with a serious chip on your shoulder and not worth responding to any further.

/ignore

lwpeterkin

Nunyabiz - I know it has been awhile since you had the bad gas mileage issue. I am having the same problem, with my 98 ES300. Went from 22 mpg to 16 mpg. Had it checked at the Lexus dealer on the computer and all looks well. Do have have any further insights since you last posted on this. Thank you.

285exp

All you have to do is inflate your tires, quit using E10, and change your plugs and air filter. Problem solved!

PFB

I too started experiencing the identical problem over the last two months. My gas milage inexplicably dropped from around 22mpg to 16mpg.

The only commonality that I noticed amongst the people posting this problem is that it always seems to happen during the hot summer months.

Its been unusually hot this summer even here in Montreal Canada. So may be the heat has something to do with it.

Hopefully my MPGs will return to normal once the weather cools down a bit.

Phil

Specter

Ok, maybe a real stupid question.... Is there really any difference in gasolines ?

I just had someone recently tell me that ARCO gas "burned faster" lowering the miles per tank full.

????

juan24

i mean, once your car has over 100,000 miles on it, you shouldnt put brand new car oil on it, you should be putting 10-30W or 40W atleast since your engine has been running for a while now , maybe that could change up your mpg's. Castrol or Mobil1 or Royal Purple oils preferable.