LordRipberger

Hey Guys,

I have a 2006 v6 mustang and I have a concern with my gas milage. I use to live in Indiana where I would get about 20mpg. Since I have moved to MD I have noticed that mpg has dropped to 16 mpg. This sucks, I purchased a v6 for the better MPG since I didn't race but now I am getting just as bad as the GT.

I drive about 10 miles a day and half of that is on the highway. But even in the town, the RPMs hardly ever go over 2000rpms. It gets to about 2100 when on the highway, but that is about it. I have made it a point to make sure this is true as a test. But what doesn't make sense is that I am getting less MPG then when I would drive for an hour at 70MPH at 2600-2800rpms.

Thoughts?

I bought the car used. I have never done a tune.

Thanks.

BRADGTCS

Some states have a summer driving blend and a winter driving blend of gasoline. Washington state does and my gas mileage will drop during the winter blend season. also what is the terrain like there compared from where you came from. more hills means more work for the engine. Traffic may also have an impact on the mileage.

LordRipberger

There are a few hills, but I would say there is only one big one but it is short. But once you go up you need to come down. I don't think the hills are really dropping 4 MPG. As I said, even with the hills, I kept it around 2000rpg.

Unless I have no idea of what I am talking about.

BRADGTCS

well being from the Seattle Washington area we have a lot of hills and they are steep. That ends up working the engine much harder going up. as far as going down these hills the engine is also used as a slow down device or all our rotors would be warped.

tukatz

Yeah. Driving a stick in Seattle is SO much fun. NOT!!!

tu3218

What part of MD you live in? I'm in harford county. But I have a GT and I average 22 highway and city so far this winter. Not sure if its my tune and cai that's giving me the boost or not.

Jump on the highway and reset it while driving. I would think you'd at the very least be able to pull an average of 25mpg going around 70 mph. I know I can do that fairly easily in mine.

LordRipberger

Maybe my car has had a tune and I didn't know it. I don't think I have ever averaged 25MPG in the last 3 years I have owned it.

I live in Glen Burnie, pretty much at the corner of 695 and highway 2.

tu3218

Yeah I don't know of a way to tell besides I guess getting an actual tuner. On highway, I can get 28-29 mpg going 65-70mph.

But its possible you have a tune. But is there anything else modded on your car? If someone spends money on a tuner, I'm willing to say they'd have other mods as well. Maybe, maybe not.

LordRipberger

You are probably right. But as far as I can see there is nothing else.

Rjaniz

Is your V6 auto or stick? How are you calculating your MPG? Onboard computer or doing the math yourself?

Cavero

Traffic in the DC - Baltimore region is a b*tch. how much of it do you deal with? How much ethanol was in your gas back in indiana? Gas in this region is ~10%

LordRipberger

I avoid most of the traffic. I am at work by 7 so I don't have to deal with the stupidity that is the traffic around here. And I go home around 3 so I beat everyone home too.

I think Ethanol was the same.

I calculate the milage via the odometer and the amount of gallons I put in to fill up. But even if this is a bad why of doing it, I have always done it this way. So whether it is really accurate or not it is still a 4-5 mile per gallon difference.

Rjaniz

Nope, that's the best way to calculate the MPGs, so you're good there.

This sounds like the exact same problem I had with my auto '08 V6 (bought new). I live in suburbs and I couldn't get past 16-18mpg (combined) unless I was doing nothing but highway (which bumped up to 22-25mpg). Always babied, never floored, coasting as much as I could... and even added a CAI and tune to try and help it out: nothing improved it. "blend" of fuel had zero impact. Mechanics ran tests and said it was perfectly fine. In the end, nothing could be done and no one could give me any info on why it sucked aside from "it's driver error". (Which I maintain is mostly BS. I'm not the most gentle driver ever, but there's no way I should have been continually underpreforming like that.) What didn't help at all was it was performing within the window sticker's declared numbers, so really, there technically was nothing wrong. But I had a bunch of friends with V6s doing much better mileage under the same conditions.

Honestly, I don't think there's an easy fix or even a fix at all. Not without a major engine overhaul anyway. You might've just got one like mine. Ultimately, I couldn't spend oodles of cash(and time) to figure out why I was losing out (the expenditure wouldn't have been worth it), so I just ended up trading to a fully loaded, manual GT of the same year. I figured if I was going to have "GT Mileage" might as well have a GT along with it (that and my V6 was pretty bare-boned and I wanted some creature comforts). Funny part is my mileage improved with the GT (which lended credibility to my declaration of BS on "driver error").

Regarding your situation, I would take it to a mechanic and have them run a test to start (they probably won't find anything, but it's a good starting point), maybe get one of those MPG monitors (lil' bit pricey unless you can find one cheap on ebay), or just flat out do what I did and trade cars first chance you get.