Hi all,

According to the specs, my Sebring is supposed to be getting approx 17MPG city and 24MPG highway. Now my wife drives the car to work 5 days a week which is a 4 mile round trip plus a few trips to the store, visiting friends locally...etc. Perhaps 40 miles a week are put on the car with hardly ever going over 45MPH.

My first fill up showed we got 14MPG and the second (yesterday) showed 11MPG. Yikes!! The car runs beautifully, smooth as silk with no exhaust smoke. I understand this question is sort of lame since it could be caused by a number of issues but I was wondering if anyone could give me there best guess as to why such poor gas mileage.

Of course the car is 10 years old with 87,000 miles. New timing chain, water pump, valves, intake/exhaust gaskets etc two months ago.

Thanks

 

Does it have a mini computer on the dash that shows mileage? There's an instantaneous page and a long-term average page if you have it. Might want to check the readings there.

Could be a lot of things causing bad mileage. My minivan had a dragging front brake caliper as a result of a bad brake hose that caused very bad mileage.

Mileage will improve after an oil change. Trans fluid could be a similar issue.

 

Also 4 miles does not even allow for the engine to go into closed loop for more then a few min. U will also need to do the math yourself not rely on the trip computers.

 

Thanks all. I figure that gas mileage the old fashion way. Miles divided by gallons!

 

Yeah, the short trips are murder on gas mileage. A 4 mile round trip is a 2 mile trip taken twice a day. Change your oil more frequently. The car probably never gets really warmed up, so you'll wind up never really driving the moisture from condensation out of the crankcase or the exhaust system, and maybe never really bringing the battery up to full charge.

 

I agree. I need to take the Sebring out at least once a week on the freeway and "put the spurs to her". I do warm the car up 5-10 minutes every morning just to warm it up and insure the battery gets an adequate daily charging. This also accounts for the crappy gas mileage.

 

Update on gas mileage. Well, after owning the Sebring for about 7 months now, the wife and I finally took the car out on a fairly long trip. We traveled from Layton Utah to Wendover Nevada and put 300 miles on the car averaging about 75 MPH for the bulk of those miles. We got 26 MPG and it ran beautifully. Couldn't be more pleased!

 

Ah yes.. the difference between ultra short trips and nice, easy highway cruises.

Back about 50 years or so ago my dad was working for a Mercedes dealership. They had one wealthy customer (actually, I think all of the customers had to be wealthy in those days to own a benz) who only drove a very short distance to work each day. He had the car in the shop because it was running crappy. Even after a tune-up it still wasn't right. The shop foreman walked by the back of the car and just happened to notice that the tail pipe was almost blocked up with carbon. Seems that the car only ever ran on choke....
He took it out for a long spin and gave it the gears..... ran like a champ after that.

 

That's another great point Thundercraft. In addition to the better gas mileage (duh!), "giving the spurs" on a semi regular basis to a vehicle that ordinarily never goes beyond 40 MPH is a healthy thing.....