Quote:
Originally Posted by firdale
Excellent thread. Great to see cherokee's averaging mid 20's. That's what I'm shooting for. Just got a 96 cherokee I6 auto. Careful driving was netting about 20 mpg. Got new tires last week, 205x75x15 with studs (suppose to have been an option on the cherokee at some point), and averaged right at 1.5 mpg more on trip across state this weekend. Best tank of five yielded 23.8.
Was pretty excited about the aero mods, but on one leg of the trip we bucked 20 + mph headwinds for 187 miles at 60-65 mph (usually keep it under 60) and milage only dropped to 19.8. I know it's not that simple, but if fighting strong headwinds and going faster drops FE less than 2mpg, maybe there are mods that would be more productive.
Am going to modify the air intake next and see if that makes a difference.
|
Nice numbers, congrats. As they say on the vehicle-specific enthusiast boards,
Fill out your signature with the truck specifications. A 4WD is different than a 2WD, an auto from a manual, etc.
Spent the weekend wrenching on the usual Jeep reliability culprits. Try the NAXJA board for issues if not already familiar. Cheap to buy, cheap to run, and cheap to fix. Hard to beat a well-chosen XJ.
As to tires I went to a barely taller, but wider tire years back on our XJ's. Now want to return to the stock 225-70/16 as mpg was better, as was ride (now currently have an LT tire that ruined the ride however much handling was improved). Am looking at the MICHELIN
Symmetry as it looks as though a tire life of 80k miles is easy, and, as an LRR passenger car tire, it fits in all ways with weight specs, etc, to be encountered on our '01 2WD Limited and the way we use it (now and foreseeable).
As to the air intake (and filter size, etc) search for a HP calculator and you'll see that the stock airbox is plenty good for the rated power. I believe that an upgrade to the traditionally sloppy Jeep steering is a way to improve overall FE and reliability/performance as bang for the buck. Same was true for polyurethane bushings on the shock absorbers and FF/RR antiroll bars.
There is also a nice thread hereabouts on aeromodding an Cherokee XJ.
.