Determining Gas Mileage

[03altima]

In your experience, what has been the best way to determine gas mileage in your vehicle? When we first bought our car, I swear we were getting more miles to the gallon than we are now, so I want to test it and see exactly how many miles to the gallon we're getting.

 

[striker]

My car has a gas and mileage gauge. If I reset the mileage to trip then I can see how long it takes for the gas to go down. I'm not sure how you would do it for older cars.

 

[Aces]

When we go on a trip, I often will write down the mileage and gas consumption for the duration of the trip. I have a general idea, but I don't do this on in-town use. Still, the information comes in handy when we're purchasing new cars.

 

[bjstorm]

Newer vehicles will show what the gas mileage is from fill-up to fill-up. The old way is to fill up a car and set the odometer to zero. Then the next time you fill up divide the number of gallons it took to fill into the number of miles driven. That will give you your miles per gallon.

 

[Naptime]

Fill your gas tank and then keep track of how many miles that you can drive until your tank is just about empty. Then just do some basic math to figure out what your mpg is. It is fairly easy to do.

 

[ZoomZoom]

I agree with BJ. The easiest and most correct way is simply to fill up the tank, write down your current mileage (or reset the trip odometer), drive the car until it's almost empty, fill up the gas tank and divide the number of gallons (including tenths) by the number of miles travelled. Very acccurate.

 

[vroombaby]

We tend to check this about once a month since we use the car more than the truck. I mean with prices like they are now if I can avoid driving a gas hog I will so the truck only goes out on special occasions.

 

[03altima]

Thanks everyone. I wish my car kept track from fill-up to fill-up, like bjstorm was talking about, but unfortunately it doesn't have that feature, so I'll just keep track of the mileage between fill-ups instead.

 

[JackSwagger]

Gas mileage depends on performance, and it will be great to replace engines if not getting good performance.