Car Talk

btw. a couple weeks ago, i got a transmission flush. omg $150.
now the car is behaving better, but my mileage is still shit. i suppose it must be unrelated. anyone have any ideas? i keep my tires right. i just used a fuel cleaner. i have taken to driving much more slowly, trying not to suck so much.*sigh*

heh. ew.however, $150 the week i transition from temp to perm at my job and skip a week of pay isn't any less fun.

well. it *just* had a tune up. okay about a year ago. and just after that i replaced the fuel filter (which hadn't been touched) and we just changed the spark plugs (like, a month ago). i think we did the air filter. that one's really easy.oh! pcv. is that the one on that back (passenger) side of the engine? i was having problems with that before. the hose kept popping off. it was fixed. maybe that's it. my mileage suffered greatly when it was off. (i'm sure there's an important reason for this, but cars are like computers. they run on voodoo and dust.)Edited by brennakimi, : No reason given.

we just changed the plugs. they weren't gapped correctly before.
i know not of these wires.well. i'm really not sure what the mileage was before because when i switched from my 94 villager last august, i forgot to keep track of my mileage to get an average. btw, i got about 18mpg in that. so. previously i was getting about 340 miles on my i think 15 gallon tank. that's about 22mpg. that may be a bit high, but i think that's right. it's easy for me to remember what that tripometer says. it was about the same that my van got but with a smaller tank. i had some issues with it when this air valve on the passenger side of the engine kept popping off and i went down to 16 or so. now that someone brought it up, it may be that again, but the valve was on the last time i looked at it. i got that fixed last october i think. so in june i tried the ethanol and my mileage went down to 10mpg. it only got vaguely better and slowly after that. i used a fuel system cleaner and that helped a *little*. it sounded better after we changed the plugs, and the transmission is much better since the flush/filter. but. my mileage is still balls, like i said. it's about 16 now.sure it's a 7 year old car, but it shouldn't be that bad. it's probably cheaper to buy the gas in the short run, but if it's something simple and cheap (especially something pep boys should have done, but didn't) then i'd like to pursue it.

i figured. i need to make friends with a mechanic so i don't have to pay 60 bucks for someone to put a wire on my car and wait for a computer to run numbers.