About 2 weeks ago my car suddenly went from an average of 27mpg around town to 12-17. And as I paid closer attention to it I started noticing that it sometimes takes a whole gallon to travel 5 miles, and then at other times back to 25-28 per gallon. It also started having trouble cold starting without hitting the gas around this time. I asked my friend who's a mechanic about it and he said the gas mileage I'm getting right now is more believable (I thought that was more typical of V12s) for this kind of car and thinks there's nothing wrong therefor won't bother with it.
If your judging mileage by the change in fuel tank level than its going to be wrong. The first half tank i can go like 200 miles than the second half i can go less than 100.
Fill it up, reset the trip than when its empty divide the total miles by 12. The V8 LTx dont get good mileage.
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BTW. On a side note. One of my neighbor's friends has a 98 Camaro with the same engine and it sounds like a normal car. My friend has a 95 Camaro with an LT1 V8 engine in it and; while our two cars sound distinctly different, they are both equally loud. Mine sounds more "bee hiveish" but otherwise they're pretty much the same. It's been like this since I got it. My friend thinks the previous owner installed flow masters. I don't know what those are. I briefly looked them up but didn't quite get it. Anyone know if flow masters or anything else that would make a V6 Camaro sound like that are going to cause problems?
FlowMaster is the name of a company that makes exhaust products. Mufflers, catalytic converters....etc...etc. And not going to cause problems. Except for maybe the exhaust corroding, overtime. FlowMaster isn't the greatest made exhaust parts.
About 2 weeks ago my car suddenly went from an average of 27mpg around town to 12-17. And as I paid closer attention to it I started noticing that it sometimes takes a whole gallon to travel 5 miles, and then at other times back to 25-28 per gallon. It also started having trouble cold starting without hitting the gas around this time. I asked my friend who's a mechanic about it and he said the gas mileage I'm getting right now is more believable (I thought that was more typical of V12s) for this kind of car and thinks there's nothing wrong therefor won't bother with it.
The mechanic you had look is what I refer to as fbody retarded. He sees that its an fbody and assumes terrible mileage. There are 4th gens running boost that get better(not by much but still better) than what you seem to be getting. How are you measuring your mpg?
The mechanic you had look is what I refer to as fbody retarded. He sees that its an fbody and assumes terrible mileage. There are 4th gens running boost that get better(not by much but still better) than what you seem to be getting. How are you measuring your mpg?
Directly by filling up the tank, resetting the trip odometer at the time.
For shorter distances but less accurate tracking I've monitored how much gas it takes to move the meter from one area to another and keeping track of consistency over time. For example, there's a particular area I tend to spend allot of time with the gas gauge at and roughly 2.5 gallons (around $10) consistently moves it from one area to the next and a couple financially tight moments when I could only put $3 and change and $5 and change demonstrated that gas gauge movement in this particular area is pretty consistent with the actual amount of gas being used.
Last week I put $10 in and ran my brother to Taco Bell (about a 5 mile trip). On the way there almost half of that gauge had depleted. On the way back it barely moved at all. 2 days ago I repeated (filled up to the same spot) and drove around for a good half hour or so to get the meter back to where it was when we pulled in at Taco bell.
I know it's not the most accurate thing in the world (that's why I said 12-17mpg) but; having checked for consistency with gas in the tank in between tests/experiments, it seams pretty clear that it's randomly fluctuating between normal and terrible gas mileage. In this case it's so bad it's obvious.
Do you have a check engine light on? Also how far do you have to push the pedal down. Obd2 cars have what is called a clear flood mode. Simply depressing the accelerator pedal 80% or more then turning the key to the start position will put your car into clear flood mode. This will deactivate the injectors and if the car starts it could indecate a leaky injector.
I'll try that in a little bit. That actually makes sense to me because; although I have yet to prove either way, I am getting the impression that it's losing gas by just sitting still, turned off. I've had a couple indications of this but have yet to come up with a way to test it.
Op: since you know your mileage is bad and shouldn't be now we need to find the problem. How is the car running? Is there any stumbling or running poorly? I would think with a drop this big in mileage you would notice something about how its driving too. Also are you running factory gears in the rear? Not likely your issue because you would have noticed this issue after the swap. Give us some details on the cars running behavior and the type of driving and if more city than highway.
The only change I've noticed that happened near or around the time that it started getting bad gas mileage is it stopped cold starting without hitting the gas pedal. The car DOES have other problems but most are known and unrelated to anything that would effect gas mileage in this way.
The dash gas gauge is flawed. Its like that on all fbodys. The first half a tank lasts forever then the last half goes quickly. You need to judge based off the odometer
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Are there any exhaust leaks? I had a small exhaust leak in a 3.4L 1995 Camaro and since it was before the O2 sensors, it was causing the O2 sensors to get false readings due to the extra air getting into the exhaust and it was causing it to call for more fuel than necessary. Basically wasting my gas because the sensors thought that there wasn't enough fuel in the exhaust. Really the problem was too much air that was leaking in.
Are there any exhaust leaks? I had a small exhaust leak in a 3.4L 1995 Camaro and since it was before the O2 sensors, it was causing the O2 sensors to get false readings due to the extra air getting into the exhaust and it was causing it to call for more fuel than necessary. Basically wasting my gas because the sensors thought that there wasn't enough fuel in the exhaust. Really the problem was too much air that was leaking in.
I've been holding my breath because the problem appears to have suddenly gone away on it's own. Cold starts fine now, gas mileage back to normal. Whether or not it'll last, I don't know. We'll see.
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