[thatguitarguy]

I've been lurking, and thought I might as well join.

I recently bought a '97 Chrysler Town & Country LXI with 188,000 miles on it. It has the 3.8 V6 and an auto tranny, with power everything, and largely unused (by me anyway) A/C. Not a typical high MPG kind of car, but I needed something right away and I often need to haul stuff, so this suites those needs. The guy I bought it from said that he usually got 17 mpg according to the trip computer. I figured I could do better than that, and I was excited about having a car with a trip computer. It immediately started having an effect on my driving habits, and I was getting between 23 and 24 mpg right of the bat. I found out that this car adjusts the way it runs to your style of driving, so I disconnected the battery for a while to see if I could reset it. Oddly the radio and clock retained settings, but the trip computer did not, so I think the computer reset.

Anyway, over the last 1000 miles I drove for 20 hrs and 10 mins, so obviously this is mostly highway driving, but it includes many trips over high mountain passes. I travel to Denver frequently at 1 mile high, and I live in Leadville at 2 miles high. Over those 1000 miles I averaged 27.9 mpg with no modifications to anything but my driving habits. I have used the cruise control a lot, and I found it to be advantageous rather than detrimental to my mileage. I have slowed down from driving at the speed limit to trying to stay below 65 for the most part,

I look forward to playing with some aero mods to see how much I can trim.