95 nissan pathfinder

[Coucoui6]

okay,
new to this forum and to the world of gas savings habits. in the past, my hobbies and interest was all about making the car go faster, turn harder, and stop on a dime.

i currently have 4 cars in our family: 2000 honda odyessey (wife), 95 pathfinder (my daily), 94 miata (autox, track), 98 BMW M3 Dinan supercharged (my baby, only 62K miles)

so my daily pathfinder is pretty stock ... i do have bigger 31" offroad tires with a cheap 3" suspension lift. since this is my daily driver... i know this car the best with MPG.

normal driving with on/off AC use is 14.5 MPG
behaved driving w/o AC use is 17.4 MPG.
i just started to do gas saving tricks so i need to get better MPG calculations, but so far i've added acetone and xylene (3 oz per 10 gal) and made my own fuel heater with copper tubing. i've notice a big difference already. i 've just not did the calculations yet because i'm on my 1st tank of gas. fyi, before the gas saving mods, i did start with a good oil change, motor flush and tune up (ie. changed my cap and rotor tip). but i still have the same old spark plugs and wires.

any suggestion on what else i can do? ie. performance plugs or wires.

thanks,
coucoui 6

[Coucoui6]

some of the plugs i was considering was halo spark plus (lgs brick) vs. pulse plugs vs. Brisk Racing - Model LGS? anyone with experience?

what about wires? Granatelli's MPG/Plus vs. nology hot wires?

thanks,
sam

[GasSavers_BEEF]

if you don't use the truck for off-roading, I would change out the tires and take off the lift. you could also block off your front grill and air up your tires to max sidewall pressure.

many of the gassaving things that we do here are against "going fast" and some actually take power from your engine (like the warm air intake).

I would thing that as far as plug wires go, you would want ones with the least resistance so that you get more voltage to the plug. I am not an expert on plugs and wires so don't take my word for that.

on the other hand, you could always sell it and buy a used honda.

[Coucoui6]

i actually had a 92 honda civic ofcourse it was all modified with a JDM motor, etc... i love it ... i got 33 mpg and drove 90mph all day long. my wife forced me to sell it when we had our son. that was 4 yrs ago.

i live in a land of domestic suv and lifted truck. my pathfinder would be better protection for my son as a daily driver.

[GasSavers_BEEF]

you could still take off the lift and the fifty pound tires. there are also some pretty safe cars out there compared to the SUVs. you would be suprised how some of the SUVs faired in the crash test scores. not too good.

[Coucoui6]

beef,
yes.. i can take off weight. i will go with a smaller tire on my next rotation... no need to changing my tires now ... the 31's cost me $$$. and your right about suv safety and roll over on hwy speeds and side impact. but regardless of lab testing...

in real world within city driving were average speeds are 35-65 mph. the bigger car wins. now this is my opinion... I'm a chiropractor that sees new personal injury cased all the time. yes, the mid size cars are better at accident avoidence but if the car is hit by a full size suv or visa versa... i rather be in the full SUV!

and i have a small suv by today's standards.

thanks for your input.

[GasSavers_BEEF]

didn't mean to ruffle your feathers.

I assumed that when you went to larger tires, you may have changed your rims as well. in most cases when this is done, people still have their old rims/tires laying somewhere and I was thinking it would be easy for you to put them back on.

I was obviously mistaken. you asked about how to increase mileage.

other things that you could do with your current vehicle. belly pan or extend your air dam. also the grill block and the tires pumped to max side wall will still help. also change driving style. there are several options for an MPG meter for OBDII but yours is before that so you would have to do some searching to make one.

I was actually trying to help you not criticize you for your choices. I actually responded to this post firstly because no one else did.

[Coucoui6]

Beef,
i thank you for your inputs... its all good. i could have giving more details to my daily driver...

so far i have done little things to my wife's odyssey, to include adding a rubber stopper on the backside of her gas peddle. so the throttle with never be wide open. i'm looking into hot air intake for both the honda and nissan now. but i really dont' want to block the radiator unless its winter but southern california is still pretty hot. i've just installed new spark plugs on her van and i will install a home made fuel heater...

coucoui 6

[GasSavers_BEEF]

I was really concerned about temps when I decided to block my grill. depending on the year of her odyssey (good choice by the way) you could use a scangauge and monitor temps just to make sure.

many people on here have had great success with this and have left the smallest of openings in the grill which has provided more than adequate cooling for the car. check out my pics and it might shock you. I have completely and permanently blocked off my lower grill and most of my upper. the design of my car allows air to come in from below the bumper when it is moving so I don't have any issues there. the grill block is definitely a car by car design. what worked for me, probably won't work for you. it is also climate dependant. I think we have only seen 2 or 3 days where it hit 100 degrees and they were low 100s on top of that.

hot air intakes work for some but not all vehicles. it definitely worked for me. I saw roughly 10 percent gains from it. I also had to add a heat shield to get the temps higher. I can also monitor my incoming air temps (IAT) with the scangauge. it is a handy little device but only works with 1996 and newer cars. all the ones with the OBDII connector.

another drawback with the odyssey though is it has a hause of a V6 in it. I think it is like 260hp. I don't know if I could keep my foot out of it myself. they are really nice. I also have a picture in my grage of my wife's element. my goal for that is 27MPG. it is all-wheel-drive so I don't know how doable that goal is.

sorry for the book, hope it helps some.

*edit* since I have started playing with grill blocking, to my knowledge, the cooling fan hasn't had to come on. mine comes on around 215-220 deg. it used to come on when I would sit in line at the bank. now I just go inside. my temps stay around 188-197 with a 195 deg t-stat