With Gas prices quickly rising, car owners are becoming more and more conscious of the amount of money they’re spending on gas. Here are a few tips which will save you money by increasing the gas mileage of your vehicle:
- Check your tires – ensure that your tires are properly inflated to their recommended tire pressure. This information can typically be found on a sticker on the driver’s door jam, and on the sidewall of the tire. Under inflated tires can easily reduce your fuel economy by 3%-4%, since the rolling resistance is increased due to low pressure and more rubber being in contact with the road. An under inflated tire will also wear more quickly for the same reasons.
- Perform Regular Maintenance – Check your vehicle’s owner’s manual and ensure that you’re keeping up with the recommended maintenance. Your wheels should always be in alignment, otherwise your engine is wasting fuel fighting against wheels that are fighting against each other. Additionally, a dirty air filter or an engine that’s in need of a tune-up will run less efficiently.
- Remove your Roof-Rack – although it may be convenient to have your roof-rack on your vehicle at all times (or at least for the duration of the season of your favorite sport), roof racks create considerable aerodynamic drag and are proven to reduce your fuel economy. If you don’t want to remove the roof rack in between trips, make sure you have a wind fairing on the front of the rack – this will greatly reduce wind noise and will help to make the rack more aerodynamic and therefore produce less drag.
- Close your windows at High Speeds – When traveling at speeds over 50MPH considerable air resistance is caused by the windows being open – this will lower your fuel economy more-so then when you’re traveling at lower speeds.