74Mach1

The thing you have to keep in mind on an open, anonymous forum like this is that there are people participating who are, for the lack of a better term, "shills." There are guys paid to participate on the forum by oil companies (and the oil change industry) telling you that you should get your oil changed every "1000, 2000 or 3000 miles" which is great for their income, but completely unnecessary. You should follow Ford's recommended service schedules.

And there are people paid by Ford (and large dealerships) to downplay any problems, and again, for lack of a better term, "lie" about the gas mileage that they're getting. "Sure, buy a V6 Mustang and you'll get 28, 30 or 32 mpg." You should expect to get the EPA numbers or a couple of mpg less. Yes, a professional driver who knows the engine's computer programming could do a little better, but he would be a hazard to the rest of the drivers on the road since he wouldn't be blending with traffic. Similarly, you could get right on the back bumper of a big rig on the interstate and get better than the EPA highway rating, but you'd have a really boring view and a really smelly trip.

No, Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.

kevinv-6

I do all city driving and I only get between 225-250 miles a fill up.

Fellser

I don't have a V6 yet, but I'm a nut about gas mileage.

Why not reset the gauges, but the next time you get gas, write down how many gallons and the miles driven and just divide them.

My Honda didn't have a message center and I did that for the first -- oh, who am I kidding, I did it on almost every tank of gas. At least you'll find out what the car is actually doing and if the message center is wrong. In a tech-no-logical world, sometimes the old fashioned math is best.

Ponycar

This is a great point. I track the mileage on almost every tankful because big swings or a steady decline can be an indicator of other problems, from minor things like tire pressure to more significant problems.

pony_up

Just filled my tank for the 2nd time last night and did the manual calc and got 24.875 on the 1st tank. That was mixed driving. So far so good...

Falchion

I've only got around 800 miles on my car so far and I'm getting maybe 18.8 MPG right now with about 40/60 highway/city driving......

I'm hoping it will get better as the car gets broken in?

ManEHawke

The Mustang holds 16 gallons, so when it's at half it doesn't mean it has wasted 8 right, because of the few gallons it always holds on reserve even when it's at E.

iCedOuT297

I have around 1800 miles on my mustang also and it shows anywhere from 12-14 which is ridiculous. Yesterday I barely pushed the gas at all just to see what it got (I kept it under 1500 RPMs the whole time) and it read 17.75 after 10 miles. When I regularly drive I do gun the car and get it up to 5-6000 RPMs every once in a while, and I take off of stop lights fast, but even with that, it should still be over 15 mpg at least. Next fill up I'm going to manually calculate the mpg rating, hopefully my message center is just screwed up or something..

Snets

This is the ONLY way to get your MPG correct. Beyond that, take the average of each fillup for the year, that's your TRUE MPG. Depending on the pump, FULL can vary by 1-5 gallons in my 31 Gal truck tank. Average it out over the long haul......

ed3sanders

I dont work for Ford....
My best...all hwy @ 70mph
And my normal...

Zodiac

Id just like to say Ive met Ed, had several conversations with him, and would trust this guy implicitly. Hes never given me any reason to doubt him, and he knows his cars!

For the record, Im 18 yrs old and though Ive been offered a job a two different Ford dealerships, I do NOT and never HAVE worked for Ford. And though Ive come close to failing out of math every year since 5th grade, my calculator is still more or less right most of the time

ed3sanders

If it were mine I would have it looked at!!!
I did some testing to see what was worse I could get for a tank. I ran it hard many red line takes offs and all around town driving. I also took the time to check the message center and this is what I came up with:

The Message Center=265.3 Miles=====14.2 GAL======19.0MPG
Pen & Paper======265.3 Miles=====14.116Gal=====18.8MPG

Also if you use the numbers from the message center and figure it out it comes out to 18.7 I think that is close enough for me to trust it. If mine drops to 10 or 15 I would have it fixed...If I left out any info that you need just ask me...
I will be more than GLAD to help.

kevinv-6

ok so I just did this and I got 17.57 miles per gallon on that tank, all city driving with my a/c on also an automatic..

WorkInProgress

I am not, and never will be, a "shill" for Ford. I don't have the technical knowledge for Ford to be interested in me . I'm just stating what I get on my mileage.

I had my windows tinted recently and they told me to keep my windows rolled up for 5 days. As a lot of people know, Houston + May + windows up = A/C at full blast. I ran my A/C full blast practically the entire tank and I still got roughly 340 miles out of just under 15 gallons. Comes out to about 23 MPG. That's almost all highway driving, but it's still not bad. I wish I had the message center to get more accurate readings, but I honestly average about 25 MPG.

74Mach1

I wasn't claiming that everyone was a shill, just that we have no way to know who is (and some definitely are.) And your mileage is about what one should expect. If your car is an automatic, it's rated at 19 mpg city and 25 mpg highway. You did mostly highway driving and got 23 mpg when you measured it. That's reasonable, but 30 mpg isn't. Can it be done? Sure. Before the EPA ratings there used to be an annual event called the Mobil Economy Run that all the manufacturers took part in. I had a 1966 Fairlane GTA that I and the car magazines got about 10 mpg with. At the Economy Run the drivers (using all sorts of weird driving techniques) could get 19 mpg. So a photo of a 2005 Mustang's message center estimate of 30 mpg isn't impressive at all. Certainly it can be done, just not in the real world.

Also, the message center mileage meter is unlikely to be very accurate - I mean, where's the accuracy going to come from? Sure, the car has a pretty good idea about distance traveled, but tire inflation changes the rolling radius and that introduces errors. And the car has no accurate idea about how much fuel it has used. The gas guage is highly inaccurate and while the car has pretty good accuracy about instantaneous fuel flow, the integrated error over the usage of 10 gallons of gas makes that measurement useless, too. The only accurate way is to manually record miles and gallons over a long period of time, and do the math by hand.

But what I really wonder about is "why does anyone care that much?" I always check the mileage of my new cars once around town and once on a trip, and then the heck with it. I'm just not that ****. Sure, if you're getting 10 mpg you should have the dealer check it out. But "bragging rights" for gas mileage? I mean if you care that much, why aren't you driving a VW Beetle diesel or a Honda Insight?

GIDDEUP

I do a mix of Freeway/City driving and get average of 26mpg for my last 4 fillups. Just rolled on 2000 miles this week.

AWmustang

I doubted the accuracy of the message center too. But I reset the gallons used at each fillup and it has been within .1 gallons, which can easily be attributed to the shutoff sensitivity of the pump.


As for the car not knowing how far it has gone due to tire pressure and such. Doesn't the odometer use the same system as the Message center. Thus you would think the car has gone the exact same distance that the message center was using in its calculations.

Stadifer

I'll follow the book on octane. Ford says 87 so I'll put 87 in... Some noted they heard of increases in performance with higher octane. I've heard/seen the engine perform worse with higher octane then the engine is rated for. That and Ford notes that knocking noises from the engine could worsen with higher octane's.

An anywho, off my soap box. I've driven about 360 miles and I'm averaging (per message center) about 17.3 MPG. I'm sure the car's computer is still calibrating. But the first time around I let it run almost all the way down so I could fill it with 76 gas. I'm sure the dealership put cheap crap in it. From here on out I won't let it get past a quarter tank.

I know my fuel milage is down a bit because I have been getting on it pretty good

Stang_123

11 mpg?

I would take it to the dealer immediately and have them check it out. Unless your accelerating uphill towing a trailer with the AC running. Otherwise you could have a problem. My manual 05 V6 averages 27-28mpg rock steady from day 1.

Are you reving the engine a lot? Idling a lot? Those both obviously kill your mileage since your burning fuel standing still.

Does your hand calculations confirm the poor mpg? If so definitely take it in, that is a problem.

Stadifer

I'm in somewhat of the same boat. The lowest I've seen thus far is 15.5 and the best is about 18 mpg. I'm sitting at about 870 miles on my car and I always put in 87 Octane from 76.