So a few pages back I was talking about possibly getting a new car at the end of the year and gas millage. This past week, I finally set out to calculate how many MPG I'm getting in my car. Now that I'm doing ~70 miles each day instead of ~20, it matter so much more.
This past week I drove 380.7 miles and used 13.285 gallons of gas. That comes out to be 28.65 MPG.
Let's step back and think about how ridiculous that actually is. I'm driving a 99 Camry (2.2L 4-cylinder) that's rated,
brand new, for 20 city / 28 highway (combined 23). One would assume, since the car is 15 years old, that I wouldn't be getting the MPG it would get when it was brand new. I'm actually getting slightly over the rated 28 highway, and I didn't even have ideal conditions. I had a slow leak in one tire for the entire week, so for some of my travels one tire had low pressure. Also, you're suppose to get the best gas millage at something like 55-65 MPH. Well, a good stretch each way each day was at 75-85 MPH (where the RPMs are higher, which means more gas is being used).
Now something like 99% of my commute to work is all highway. It's less than a half of mile to get out of my neighborhood and it's all highway from there. It's about ~5 miles off the last parkway to my job. But yeah, it's almost all highway. So I understand what that means. But, most days on my way home it's stop and go for 5-10 exits on the LIE.
So I figured this, with everything else stated above, would mean that I wouldn't be getting near the 28 MPG rating. I was very surprised with this number, ever more so since I could possibly increase it. Which just boggles my mind... a car getting better MPG than it's rated for.
I do keep up with maintenance on it. Before this past week, I actually changed the fuel filter (it was probably never changed in the life of the car) so that might have increased my MPG.
So getting a new car, if I can get the one I want, would only be saving me something like $50/mo in gas. I say "only" because I predicted getting less MPG in the car I have now and saving more like $100/mo with the new car. But still, an extra $50/mo would be nice if I have a car payment again.
On another note... my check engine light came on.
My brother has an OBD II scanner so I pulled the codes. Turns out it's the damn charcoal fuel canister, which has a TSB (I had it go on my 00 Corolla when I had it). It's not extremely difficult to swap out, but the stupid thing costs about $325. Shit. Now that my brother works in a shop, I'm gonna have him see if he can get it cheaper from one of their suppliers.
But, at least it's nothing that'll decrease MPG or be dangerous to drive. It's mostly just an emissions thing. My inspection is up in August, I'll just have to be sure to do it by then.
