MPG and Tire Inflation

[Smokie]

Today I traveled to St. Augustine, Fl. about 200 miles from gas station by my house to gas station here in St. Augustine. I have made this trip many times with my mm. and my usual gas mileage is 22.5 mpg.

Today before going on trip I checked my tire pressures, FL-31 psi, FR-28 psi, RL-28 psi, RR-25psi. My car sits during the week and I have neglected my pressures for quite sometime.

I set my cold pressures at 38 psi front and 36 psi rear. My driving habits remained unchanged, route unchanged. My MPG on this trip was 24 mpg. I make no claim that this a scientific study, but I am quite sure that the air pressure played a large and significant role in the improvement.

By the way traveling from Tampa to St. Augustine is going uphill I expect better MPG when I go home.

Have you checked your tire pressure lately???

[Bluerauder]

Today I traveled to St. Augustine, Fl. about 200 miles from gas station by my house to gas station here in St. Augustine. I have made this trip many times with my mm. and my usual gas mileage is 22.5 mpg.

Today before going on trip I checked my tire pressures, FL-31 psi, FR-28 psi, RL-28 psi, RR-25psi. My car sits during the week and I have neglected my pressures for quite sometime.

I set my cold pressures at 38 psi front and 36 psi rear. My driving habits remained unchanged, route unchanged. My MPG on this trip was 24 mpg. I make no claim that this a scientific study, but I am quite sure that the air pressure played a large and significant role in the improvement.

By the way traveling from Tampa to St. Augustine is going uphill I expect better MPG when I go home.

Have you checked your tire pressure lately???
I assume that you mean that you made the trip with the 38 front and 36 rear. Hope you didn't run 200 miles with those original way underinflated tire pressures.

It is pretty much accepted that underinflated tires add Rolling Resistance and therefore decrease your fuel mileage. Putting them back into the "recommended" range should optimize your MPGs.

I normally get 23.5 MPG on longer trips with 38 rear and 35 front ... so we are in about the same range.

The 6-7% improvement that you noted is typical for properly inflated tires.

[Pat]

Smokie;

I had the same experience, made a long trip, MPG wasn't what I expected, checked the pressure found 25lbs all around.

Hard to tell when these tires get low, it's incremental.

However, after filling them up to 35lbs all around I noticed a driving improvement.

[grampaws]

I keep pressures between 35 and 40psi
below 35 the outter edges of the tires
wear above 40 the center wears..
raising the pressures from 28psi
would make a significant difference
in fuel mileage and improve tire life!!
It might help with the sidewall cracking issues
some of us are have with the OEM tires!!??
IMHO..:beer:

[Smokie]

I am surprised I have lost so much air pressure since April, last time I went drag racing in April I checked tire pressures, I wasted quite a bit of fuel since then.:argh:

[Blue03]

I got so tired of looking for gas station Air I didn't have to plug quarters into :( or using some 12 volt powered from the battery cheesy take forever POS compressor, I went ahead and bought an electric powered 1 HP 4 Gallon less than $100 compressor for the garage. I'm much happier and it works for the lawn tractor and all my other pneumatic tired stuff. I can even check and fill when everything is cold. Don't know why I waited so long. :)