How come my car eats gas?

Question

i have a chrysler 300m 2002 v6 engine. ok lately i've been noticing that when i fill it up, in two days i'm down to at least 3/4 of a tank if not a lil more. for the most part all i do is go to work and go home and they are not that far from one another. it never did that before.

so my question is, what can i do to reduce the amount of gas my car eats up? or does anyone know why its eating gas like that?

and please don't give me the smart comments like "stop driving" or "use the metro"....

i need my car to get back and forth to work.

Answer 1

If you are not smelling gasoline in, or around your car you can pretty much cancel out a leak.  I would make the suggestion that you take it into a service center and have the engine tuned.

Answer 2

First suspicion is that the gas has 10% ethynol.  the lower the BTUs the more fuel you need to move the car forward.  Try using higher test gas.

Check your air pressure, this can acount for 5% of milage.  It really drops off when you are severely under inflated.

If you are stressed out, you can eat up more fuel because of your tendancy to stomp on the gas pedal.  Jack Rabbit starts are the most gas consuming operations of an engine.

If you overfill the tank by "topping" it off, you can damage the sending unit.  This can give you false readings.

In the end you have to check your gas milage by measuring miles and dividing by the gallons of fuel you've purchased.  If you are plus or minus 5% from week to week, you are ok.

Answer 3

Tune up and air pressure in your tires.  Why does everyone think this is such a great idea.

Cars haven't needed a "tune-up" since they became fuel injected.  Tune-up used to mean adjust the distributor cap and the carburetor.  Your car, just like every other car made since the late 80's doesn't have either one of those.  Tune up now means spark plugs and an oil change.  I'm assuming you're already changing your oil and spark plugs will do little if anything to increase mileage.  Proper air pressure will get you an extra 5-10% that's what? 1 to 2 mpg if your tires were way out of specs.

Monitoring the gas gauge isn't a good way to calculate mileage.  Next time you fill up your tank reset your trip odometer.  Next time you fill up look at your trip odometer and calculate mileage by trip odometer miles / gallons.  The only key is you have to fill your tank to the top both times.  Monitoring mileage this way is a good habit to do with every tank as it can be the first sign something is wrong with your car.

If you have markedly low mileage, but the engine seems like it's running fine, you probably have a leak.  Leaks can be very dangerous as they can spray fuel on hot parts of your engine or exhaust.  If you've got a leak check it out right away and get it fixed.

I bet you find once you actually calculate your mileage that it's not much different than it's supposed to be.  I bet you're around 16 mpg city.  Big car, big v6 = low mileage.  Don't worry, I drive a Mustang and get c**p mileage too.

Answer 4

whens the last time it was tuned up that might be your problem and i would get some Lucas injector cleaner and see if that don't help

Answer 5

take it to a mechanic. sounds like you may have a leak