So my Auto Tech teacher was discussing valve adjustments in class. I was falling asleep already and when he mentioned that it can help increase fuel economy, I was interested in hearing. My fuel economy sucks so yeah. After doing a few valve adjustments on an inline 4 and 6, I was wondering if the 2IS every needs the valves to be adjusted. I don't know if our cars have hydraulic valves or not but I'm guessing it is and it won't need to be adjusted. Just wanted some feedback since working on the 2IS engine bay isn't easy with all the wiring and tight spacing. Are there anything else I should look into to in ways of improving MPG? I've asked before but wanted to see if there is anything that no one really knew about other than the obvious stuff like tire pressure, maintenance, and etc.

 

It has hydraulic lifters, so no adjustment needed.

 

the best mod for better gas mileage is a lighter right foot.

 

a thousand times .

 

You can adjust the 2is valves, they use shimless buckets, so the thickness of the bucket changes depending on what bucket you get. This gets expensive fast, i used to have a scion tc that had issues with the buckets and the dealer couldn't ever get it right. I got it more or less acceptable after a lot of trial an error. I highly doubt you would gain anything from doing it in your 2is though, in my scion the valves were making a lot of noise.

 

you drive a 350---if you wanted fuel economy, you should have gotten a 250--you cannot have it both ways, 300 HP and a car that sips gas....

 

Sure you can, my 350 gets the same mpg as my friends 250. It all depends on how you drive the car. If you hit the gas every now and then you can still get great mileage in a 350, but if your on it all the time then its another story.

 

I got 30 mpg average yesterday on the way to and from work.

 

No, the 2IS does not use shimless buckets, or any other adjustment method like them, there's no way to adjust the valves. Most newer Toyota engines now use hydraulic adjustment, which keeps the valve lash adjusted automatically. There's nothing you can do.

The tC did have shimless buckets (like many Toyotas from the late-90's - mid-00's), but only until 2010, on the new 2AR engine it uses the same hydraulic adjuster setup that the 2IS uses.

Jeff

 

Thanks for correcting me Jeff, i thought they were still using the old setup. Its been a while since i have had an engine apart

 

When I was purchasing a car, I was looking at the EPA ratings. The sticker says 21 city and 28 highway. I'm doing 18.5 averaged in the last few months with 60% highway and 40% city. I know the ratings aren't perfect and exact, but I'd at at least expect it to be over 20. The IS250 isn't all that much better. My friend has an IS250 AWD that gets 19.6 when I was in his car. The RWD IS250 will only get 2-3 MPG better than the IS350.

 

I drive like a grandma now on my way to and from school. When I got the car in high school, I had a heavy foot then. Every light, I would just take off and people disappeared blocks back. I would average 10-12 MPG combined. Now, I gotten a bit more mature and bored of the car a bit so I don't care about that stuff anymore. In the last few months, I haven't passed anyone who was going slow, I don't accelerate over 2000 RPMs from stops, only do 60 on the highway, I just slowly pass 60 let it roll until 50 and slowly accelerate to a bit over 60 again, and sometimes I put it in neutral when I anticipate to stop soon. Not to mention, with the quick gearing transmission, I'd thought it get better fuel economy considering how I'm in D and driving down my ally at 10 MPH, I'm actually in 4th gear at only 900-1100 RPMs.

 

I don't know if this applies to the 2IS, but many modern cars actually take into consideration when you are coasting and do not spray fuel. Therefore, the practice of putting your car in neutral to coast may actually be hurting your fuel economy because the engine still needs a little fuel to keep the engine idling.

I'd say you'd get your best fuel economy driving at the lowest speed available in 6th gear and maintaining a constant speed (speeding up and coasting down constantly is probably not helping fuel economy).

 

Depends how you drive it, where you drive it, how your car was serviced, etc so many factors.

My IS250 RWD gets me 30-33mpg consistently on my work commute. Mostly highway, its 25 miles on the highway, and <5 miles in the city to my office. Even in mostly city driving, the lowest tank avg (From full to empty) has only been 25mpg for me. Still pretty good.

If your 60/40 driving is 18.5 and i'm getting 25 all city....that's considerably better lol. Just got to have a light foot, try to anticipate stops and avoid unnecessary accelerating/stopping and even in the city you can get decent mpg.

 

He's heavy on the gas.... my mostly-city tank mileage is 21-22 mpg typically, on the highway it's 28-30 pretty consistently. RWD vs RWD it's about a 10% difference in mileage 250->350.