Fuel Milage

[rufus]

I have found a few things on the internet that claim will give you more gas milage. Namely adding Acetone to your fuel, strapping magnets to the fuel line. A guy at work adds Marvel Mystery Oil to his fuel and claim 3-4 more miles per gallon. I have added the MM to my fuel in the 94 Ranger but haven't burnt enough fuel to check the milage. My Classic Cub cadet has benifited from the MM at least as far as the carberator is concerned. If if forgot to shut off the fuel it would pee all over the place and I would loose at least a gallon if not two between mowings. Now, I don't seem to loose a drop! Does anyone else have an experiences with Marvel Mystery oil? Successes or failures.

[FL.Boy]

The only way to get better mpg is to drive slower and don't take off fast and maintain your car. Acetone eats rubber up, we use it on old ready for the junk pile racing tires to soften them up and get one more run out of them and then there trash.

[BRYAN]

Most of the things people will try to peddle off on you as gas milage enhancement are pure "snake oil". The way to better economy is a properly tuned and maintained vehicle that is properly driven. Listen to FL.Boy, there is great and simple wisdom in his post. I do however have some experience with MM oil. I used a good bit and recommend it, but use it on the sparing side. I have not used it in a fuel injection system, so maybe someone with more knowledge there can help (I'm pretty old school in my equipment). The benifits of MM are upper cylinder lubrication and it helps soften carbon deposits in the valve train and head. Even if you never use it in your car, it is the best pnuematic tool lube I have ever used.

[OntarioMan]

Pay attention to the fuel you put in the vehicle. Fuels containing ethanol will reduce your fuel efficiency, sometimes dramatically. Where I'm at, Shell contains no ethanols.

The "old" EPA MPG for my Mazda is 29 mpg in the city and 37 mpg on the highway - and I regularly hit 35 mpg in the city.

[HermitJohn]

Short of illegally using a megasquirt computer system to control modern fuel injection /ignition system yourself, there really is little that you are going to do to mechanically change fuel economy in a modern car. You can control your speed and how you drive, thats only way to make a big difference.

I've never tried it, but suggest only help acetone might do would be to clean built up varnish in a high mile system.

On an older engine with hardened valve seats, you can get a little carbide jig tool from JCWhitney to resurface your own valves, then lap them into the valve seat. It will increase compression and your power and fuel mileage on an older high mile car. On ancient engines without hardened valve seats, usually the valve seats are in such poor shape, they need to be taken to a shop for any kind of effective valve job. And I would suggest you pay to have the shop machine the head to install hardened seats. They dont like doing it for some reason, and try to talk you out of it, but in my experience its worth the effort in engine life.

On older engines, carb rebuild or changeout and redoing distributor advance curve can improve mileage too. Also changing gear ratio in rear axle can help. And its not necessarily the numerically lowest ratio that gets the best mileage. Engines tend to have a rpm sweet spot. Anything you can do to get engine to run most often at that sweet spot will get highest gas mileage. I found it interesting on a Ford 6cyl forum that best mileage with power in an F150 with the big six is with a 3.55 rear axle and keeping engine from 2100 to 2400 rpm with an old 4spd and no overdrive. Not what one would expect. Run engine faster and fuel mileage drops rapidly. Run it slower and there is not much gain. Course weight, etc comes into play also. But anyway several said with above setup you can get 20 to 21 mpg in an F150 on hiway with engine in good shape. This is a relatively heavy vehicle with a relatively large engine not known for doing much better than 15mpg.

[Blu3duk]

I tried acetone in a few tanks of fuel and found it did not significantly give me anything worth my time to add the few ounces per tank, it probably helped clean up some Varnish like Hermit John says, I doubt the small amounts suggested will hurt the fuel lines for a few test runs if you want to make such, and a gallon of acetone has other uses around a place besides just a fuel additive.

A couple of cow magnets have been placed on differnt folks vehicles for 40 years now in my family, with varying results, I couldnt say of it works or not, go to the feed store and get a couple and try it out..... dont buy expensive magnets, the stomach magnets work just fine.

I started a program of adding Pri-g in my wifes expedition fuel tank this spring, and the highway mileage the first tank went from 15mpg to 22 on a 200 mile trip both ways, I was excited, The around town mileage only went from 13 to 15, but i can live with that too.

I used to use MMO for all my rigs and for stabilizing the stored gas for the lawnmower and such cause a gallon of it is not much more than a pint of Sta-bil which remarkably looks, smells and feels similar to Marvels..... With the Pri-G i quit using MMO for fuel now, and am extremely happy with the results ive gotten from the Pri-G cleaning out the rust of the older metal fuel tanks...... something that MMO did not do. I still use MMO for several other lubricant needs, and the fella that got me to use the MMO years ago told me to add a quart to a 20 gallon fuel tank and go burn it off up in the mountains cause it would smoke something fierce and then your rig would run better for it...... hey it worked for him and dont fix what aint broke, he also said he would use a gallon of diesel to a tank of gas on some rigs instead of the MMO.

William
Idaho

[Ross]

The only way I get more milage out of a tank of gasoline is to smile when I tromp on the gas. So I do! Not very green I'm sorry to say but I don't need holidays in the south or very much else to pass the days.

[Cheribelle]

My DH put the numbers into a spreadsheet to track the difference in cost and mileage using ethanol versus the regular gas which costs 10 cents more in this area. What he found was, with our vehicles, if you gain only 1/2 MPG over the ethanol, it is worth it to spend the extra 10 cents. My mileage has gone from around 20 to around 25 in my Jeep Cherokee.

[rufus]

Well I think after reading about it eating rubber up, I don't want to mess with the acitone but I have a pile of used up Hard Drives so I am removing the magnets and going to cable tie them on to the fuel line like some UTUBE videos suggest. Started a spread sheet and am going to tract using MM and see if there is a particular brand of gas that gives me the most mileage. Unfortunately, the one gas station in town that I know for sure didn't add ethonol closed down...It was an old station and the pumps wouldn't handle the $4 gas. Old mechanical pumps with whirling gears to measure volume or somthing like that.