how do you cause the 302/351 ford v8 gas milage to go up from 10 miles/gal to 15

lotadale wrote in news:9096b$537baa68$41b57997$ snipped-for-privacy@news.flashnewsgroups.com:

since you give us absoultly no infomation, I will say its climing a mountian all the time. (give us someting to go by and we will help) KB

"lotadale" wrote in message news:9096b$537baa68$41b57997$ snipped-for-privacy@news.flashnewsgroups.com...

We need more information.

If your trips are short, then you are always driving the car in a condition where the fuel mixture is rich. If you are driving short distances, then it is not on the freeway, it is at traffic lights. Since you spend a lot of your driving time at a red light, your mileage will suck. Then, you hit the gas, and your mileage sucks. All of your driving is in the worst possible driving environment -- you are either getting up to speed or you are sitting at red lights, and you are doing this all on a cold engine that never gets up to full temp.

If you are stopped at a red light, you get zero mpg for several minutes. If you are always working for the best 1/4-mile times you can get, you get horrible gas mileage, although it is better than zero. If you like the noise of high RPMs, and don't shift to the next gear until the howls and complaints make your ears hurt, you will get horrible MPG.

To get the best MPG, you want to shift early and often. You want to take your time getting off the line, and you want to hit 2nd before you get to the crosswalk on the other side of the intersection. If the light you are apporaching, lift off the gas and coast. You should time your arrival at the red light so that it is green by the time you get there. It takes far less gas to keep the car rolling than to get it rolling again after it stops.

Put some air in the tires. Under inflated tires takes lots of gas. You should read the tire placard on the driver side door jamb, but generally speaking passenger car tires take about 33 pounds of air, if you have less than 30, you will use more gas. Too little air makes the tires wear on the outside edges, too much air makes them wear in the center.

This van is a 1993 with 140,000 miles which I just bought it seems to run very well but no gas millage. I have no knowledge of recent work or any records but I have another 1993 van with same motor that I have driven since 1996 which is getting the same 10 miles per gallon and I use to get 15 all the time until it went south on me. I bought the first van as a back up and I intend selling the second unit as soon as I have some current problems repaired. I have driven several van's with 302/351 engines and always had great luck getting the 15 miles per gallon or there abouts.

I plan on changing plugs / I have always used motorcraft would bosch give me more miles ? bellows air filter

fuel filter

carb gasket and clean

idle air valve and clean

I appreciate your responding!

lotadale wrote in news:7c4f3$537bf0b8$41b57997$ snipped-for-privacy@news.flashnewsgroups.com:

Carb ????? isn`t it fuel injected, and stick with the motorcraft plugs, if it is injected, replacing the oxygen sensor can often help. unfortunatly the gas we get now is crap and getting that 15 back short of only driving 55 all the time is going to be tough. also have you done a comp test to make sure the eng is in sound shape to begin with? KB

SOME of what you are seeing with the poor mileage is the crap-gas they blend now that is part corn. There is almost nothing good about ethanol beyond the fact that they can make more of it. Sadly, making it in the first place is not really a very good deal, as you are finding out. The energy is less than gasoline, it takes 25+ gallons of water to make a gallon of ethanol, and the diversion of corn away from the food chain is causing the price of food to rise.

Of course, you are driving a brick, and that's part of it too. But the brick has always been a brick, so not much has changed there.

engines don't get mileage; Vehicles do.

Bad tire pressure, and bad thermostat are the number one causes of bad mileage on cars that /seem/ to drive fine.

A gallon of ethanol has about 70% of the energy of a gallon of gasoline. So, E10 would have about 3% less energy, so it would lower the gas mileage by about 0.5 mpg, at most.