F My Chevy Blazer

[jtbwatson]

Title says all. I'm getting pretty tired of spending what little money I make on my gas. I'm 22 and in school so any money saved is very valuable. Gas is my biggest expense unfortunately.

I live on the North side of Houston, TX and fortunately drive highway most of the time, but that still leaves me averaging about 16-17 mpg. That sucks. The most I've gotten out of my car was on the way to Austin once and I managed to squeeze out 22.6 and it seriously baffled me that you could get that much to the gallon! Sad, yes, I know.

I've been looking at a lot of these posts about aerodynamics such as blocking the front grill, underbody panels, etc. I don't think that I can get away with many of these due to the heat here. To give you an idea, today was 98 and about 70% humidity. It's tough to keep the car cool to begin with, much less after blocking everything off.

Anyways, I'm always interested in learning more and more about these things. I'll contribute my findings as well.

[oil pan 4]

Might have to privately sell it for cash and turn that over to buying something smaller.

Don't go through a dealer, they will give you $1k to $2k less than what your blazer is worth and they will sell you a vehicle and make $1 to $2k one way or another.
You pay the difference.
That gas hog would be perfect for someone with kids and too much money to spend on gas.

I did this with our Lincoln town car. Dealers wouldn't offer more than $2k to $2,500 for it.
I sold it for $3800 cash.
Dealers had ones like mine in their lots for $4k to $6k.
Took that money and got the kia. Its about a +13mpg improvement on the highway.

Oh and those early 2000s blazers like to $#!+ out their transmission some where around 70k to 80k miles.

[02ws6]

Never been a fan of the small blazers.. Love the old k5's though.. Hope to sell/trade a D15Z1 crx for a clean one sometime this summer. No since in having two of these things...

You could probably trade or sell yours for an older 5spd honda and easily doubke that mpg.. Just a thought.

[jtbwatson]

Well luckily I'm on 179k and still going strong on this transmission Gotta love synthetics.

Would dropping it really help that much? Found a 3 inch drop kit on ebay for $35 and have a shop that could probably install it for under $100. Although for that money, I could almost afford a scangauge :P

[Flakbadger]

Listen man, do the math on this. I was confronting the same issues. My truck got in the 16MPG range, I'm now REGULARLY breaking mid-40s. I'm saving thousands of dollars, no kidding.

http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...tml#post310845

Get rid of that pig and get a car.

[Flakbadger]

"I'm saving thousands of dollars, no kidding."

20,500 miles driven (some miles not represented on my fuel log for various reasons, including other people driving it), assuming $4/gal gas and my lifetime mileage of ~42MPG = roughly $1,952 in gas. Add in my $161/month car payment and you get to a total of $4,528 spent on my Yaris.

If I'd kept my (paid off) Ranger and driven the same miles with NO CAR PAYMENT at 16 MPG, I would have spent $5,125 in FUEL ALONE.

I saved around $600 while making car payments. If you add in the maintenance that I was going to have to do to the pickup (catalytic converter replacement: $1,000, clutch/slave cyl: $600, brakes: $250), you can see that I truly have saved thousands.

I'm positive your math will add up to something similar. Do it!
~Matt

[Frank Lee]

The numbers are even better if you get a used econo car.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

If you don't have the need for the Blazer, sell it, but if you would rather consider worth to get a higher-capacity vehicle you can either retain it or to get a trailer to pull with a smaller car.

[deathtrain]

I drive the same streets you do. I had a 96 1500 ram auto getting 15mpg. Went and got me a 94 corolla 5 speed. 100% Upper grill block and 80% on the lower. I have no issue with the heat.

[jtbwatson]

Originally Posted by deathtrain

I drive the same streets you do. I had a 96 1500 ram auto getting 15mpg. Went and got me a 94 corolla 5 speed. 100% Upper grill block and 80% on the lower. I have no issue with the heat.

That is relieving to hear. What temp does your car run at?

Also, do you laugh as hard as I do when people mention an AC delete lol and what part of Houston are you from?