I have been involved in some aspect of automotive service for 25 years and every day I observe something that should have been obvious to a driver of a particular vehicle.  I decided to publish this list, because saving fuel now is saving money!

1. Make sure the tires have AIR!  Regardless of type of tire, they all need the correct air pressure to work and last properly.  More than 90 percent of the tires on vehicles that come into the shop are low on air pressure.  For those of you who bought nitrogen to fill the tires (marketed to tire stores as a “profit center”), yes it is more temperature stable, but you still must have enough of it to properly inflate the tire.  Under inflated tires are dangerous and they can easily account for a 3.5% reduction in mileage.  Even the best tires will loose 2 psi per month, buy a good tire gauge and check pressures every two weeks.
2. While you are looking at your tires pay attention to any unusual wear.  If you can rub the top of the tire from the outside to inside and back the other direction and feel any feathering or sharp edges, an alignment may be in order.  A correct alignment should be not only “within specifications”, but properly adjusted for the type of driving you do.  A look at the printout should show that the technician cared about the adjustments made and that those adjustments would maximize your tires lives.
3. Use your right foot wisely.  Heavy acceleration uses much more fuel that easing away from the traffic light.  Fuel pulse times for wide open throttle (WOT) are 3 to 4 times that of a part throttle departure. 
4. Reduce the amount of “extra stuff” in your car.  The rocks from the landscaping project, the high school textbooks (c’mon it’s summer now and it is really unlikely that you are going to look at those books until September), the 50 pounds goat food….you get the idea.  Eliminating the excess can get you 2 miles per gallon in a 2002 Chevy 1500 pick-up, and suitable worthwhile gains for other cars.
5. Use the best lubricants.  If you change your own oil, make sure the weight and type of oil is correct for the operating range and temperature range changes you’ll expect to see.  Synthetics offer many benefits and while they are a bit more expensive the cost can be recovered in the mileage used.  A change to synthetic gear oil gained the above mentioned truck 1 mile per gallon.
6. Ask your favorite technician about a potential file update for your computer.  Just like everything else with computers, there are updates for certain drive-ability issues and tune-up solutions for the changes with fuel.  The files are not free from the manufacturer, but they can save a bit of fuel.  We had one customer with a Jeep Cherokee who could only use premium, or it would rattle like a paint can during acceleration, and the factory “fix” file lowered the required octane to 87 and raised the fuel mileage by 2 miles per gallon.  This particular customer cut his fuel expense by 65 dollars per month (this was before $3 gas, so his savings have expanded).
7. Follow the maintenance schedule, more maintenance translates into a lower cost per mile in the overall picture.  A technician or workshop responsible for caring for your car may have other solutions based on your specific vehicle, be sure to ask them.

These are the big ones, many people will likely follow them for awhile…..then become “used too” $90 fill-ups and become lax in their methods.  When you are saving all you can, then can scrimp no more, I understand, but wasting is just that….

My wife calls as she and our daughter are coming to meet me for dinner.  The yellow silhouette of an engine has shown on the dash.  Her first concern is if they are going to arrive safely at their destination, I assure her that it since it is still running it will likely remain so.  She asks what the normal temperature should be and states that it seems low.  Whew, I relax, not overheating is better.  I ask her to drive the car into the workshop.

During the fifteen minutes it takes them to weave through the summer road construction and the resultant traffic, I am making my mental list of things that I should double check when I interrogate the cars computer with our diagnostic tool.  There are two trouble codes present, the first indicating that the car is running too cool for what is termed “closed loop operation”, the second for a damaged air/fuel ratio sensor.  I checked the temperature of the engine 186 F, well that is easy, a new thermostat will raise that back up to the acceptable range of 196 to 210 F.  The second really was no a big surprise either, the last time I had scanned the car that sensor had been a bit on the lazy side, but that was 6 months ago.  The result of both of these trouble codes is that they have the potential to waste a lot of fuel.  Closed Loop Operation adjusts the fuel mixture to the programmed desired air/ratio to control emissions and fuel economy, the only other mode is called Open Loop Operation and is a condition where the engine is warming up or is nearly full throttle where it needs more fuel than the ideal ratio.  We had noticed that the first portion of this tank of fuel was depleting rather quickly but had not put 2 and 2 together yet.  We would have noticed when we reset the trip meter and calculated the mileage, but to catch it mid tank was even better.

You must wonder why I didn’t change that sensor before, well I wanted to get the most mileage I could from it.  Air/fuel ratio sensors are not cheap, even if don’t purchase them at the Toyota/Lexus dealer the correct part for this car will cost us just under 190 dollars, each, and while only one is bad now we are going to replace both.  This type of sensor lives a tough life, it is subjected to extreme heat on one side, up to 1400F, and our environment on the other side having salt and water from the road and the ambient temperature swings.  It is really amazing that they do hold up for approximately 90,000 miles.

With gasoline approaching $4.20 a gallon, creeping like an auctioneer begging for that final bid, the prices at the pumps are strapping all of us.  Our car repair is one of the cases of fix it or park it, the collateral damage from ignoring it will cost much more.  A catalyic converter, excess fuel used, conscious cost of the enviromental toll all weigh in heavily.  Overall we are spending an average cost per mile, for maintenance and repair, of 6.25 cents per mile, right in the average range for this make and model.  For those of you who have not computed the cost of your car, simply take the cost of repairs and maintenance and divide it by the number of miles driven.

I am inevitably the person who answers the phone when this question is asked.  The caller launches into an explanation usually starting with some information they got by stopping by the neighborhood auto parts store for a free code read.  “I have a code p0300 and I would like to know what it will cost for a “tune-up” to fix the problem on my 2000 Saturn SC2″.

The impossible part of this question is that I have not even seen the car, have no idea that the information was gathered correctly, what the situation was that led to the event (called freeze frame data), have no idea of the level of maintenance of this particular car and cannot determine anything about the consumers’ idea of vehicle care over the phone in under 6 minutes.  Worse yet, the looming obligation of entering into a verbal contract to replace what the car might need for repairs is far beyond reasonable from a professional business standpoint.  Consumers don’t call their physicians for a diagnosis of an ailment and possible treatment over the phone…and as a long time physician friend of mine commented years ago “I don’t know how you do this, many different makes, many models within them and you have to know so much.  I have two models, same make, and each has plumbing differences, the rest is basically the same.”

My nutshell answer for the Saturn caller, is usually to inform them that their car should cost them between 3 and 6 cents per mile for maintenance and repair.  While that really is not the answer they expected to hear for such a specific question such as the misfire example above, they are much more prepared for my next answer of “I really don’t know for sure what it will cost to fix your car, until I look at it myself.  I don’t like to guess what is wrong with your car, so lets get it in and we’ll see what we can do about it.”

Services like On-Star, illustrating their prowess in seeing a missing gas cap from space, and free code readouts by the neighborhood parts store have mistakenly led people to believe that you can plug into the car, and it tells you exactly what the problem is, what component to replace and that the tool reading the information does all of the work.

A professional garage should never quote prices to phone-in callers like this example.  A guess is still a guess and it is not the garages’ fault that cars got more complicated, more expensive, and more confusing for their owners.  I’ll cover the menu pricing topic another time.  For now, please consider your questions.