Gas prices in Hawaii are iNsAnE!!

[no_roads]

Hello everyone I'm Nate and I live in Aiea Hawaii and I drive a 2007 Isuzu I290 and well the window sticker lied and I get around 12 mpg average in my four cylinder automatic. I've researched the run your car on water method and seen no one that really uses it except for the testimonials through the companies that create the systems.
I was curious about the following mods and whether or not they have produced any results for anyone. 1.) Lowering the vehicle to reduce drag? 2.)Cold air intake? 3.) cat back or free-er flowing exhaust? 4.) throttle body spacer? 5.) larger tire diameter? 6.) maximum inflation? 7.) tonneau cover? 8.)window vents to crack your windows enabling air flow and the ability to stay cool and stop using a/c? 9.)the sticker on your gas tank to change up the basic chemical makeup of your fuel? 10.)the tornado air thingy in the air intake?
Any help on the previous ten is greatly appreciated. I 'm excited to see what has really worked and what is just junk.
By the way I have done nothing to the truck and it has less then five thousand miles on it and it's an automatic.

[DifferentPointofView]

wow, seriously, 12mpg in a 4? how do you drive that thing? tornado is a bunch of bull, cold air intakes don't work for FE, only power, if you got a cold air intake and put warm air through it maybe, lowering the car does work, the exhaust only works if your exhaust is restricting too much, otherwise some people restrict them more because they are too big for low RPM. Maximum inflation works, tonneau cover works, but an aero cap would work better, I don't know about the TBS, I think that the larger tire diameter is iffy depending, and 9 is probably false, as well as 8, but testing would have to confirm 8.

Good luck.

Oh, and btw, do you drive mostly over 45mph, or under?

[zjrog]

Aloha... I lived in Pearl City from 89 to 94 when I was in the Navy. Miss Hawaii a great deal, except for prices...

Wow, 12 MPG? I'd take that to the dealer if its under warranty. That just doesn't sound right at all.

[diesel_john]

welcome to the site, there many knowledgeable ecomodders here.

here is a site which may answer some of your gimmick questions,
http://www.fuelsaving.info/index.htm

BTW what is the gas price in Hawaii, we feel bad about $3-4 here.
Adjusted for inflation its the highest since 1981. which i remember well cause my adjustable mortgage when to 12% and i got laid off. those were the good old days.

[no_roads]

I usually drive at about 60-70 mph. I drive from Aiea to Kaneohe Bay MCBH everyday to work. I took it to the dealership and they told me that the window sticker is just a guesstimate and that there was nothing wrong with my truck just that it's normal to get about 8 mpg less then the lowest figure on the sticker(city mpg). Also that there was nothing I could really do about it except trade it in for an economy vehicle. I just bought the truck on november 7th of 2007. I don't want to get rid of of it just yet, maybe if the gas price goes up to say around $10 I might get rid of it. I'm going to get the tonneau cover tomorrow and maybe the cold air but I haven't decided on that yet(the cold air). I'm also going to order my lowering kit as well. Oh yeah I'm currently in the Navy I've been in since 1997 and plan on getting out soon if this retirement thing goes through( no retirement benefits until age 57!!) It's at the approval stages now! I think it's BS, I didn't sign up to get treated like crap and be away from my family for all these years just to retire at about the same time as everyone else, I've made too many sacrifices in my life for this to happen!

[Gone4]

Driving properly will give you the greatest mileage benefits. Most people here beat EPA just through altercation of driving habits. Aeromodifications can only go so far, especially on a truck with a large frontal area.

And running on water... Are you talking about the one where you add a water tank and split the molecules to burn them? The one that breaks the laws of thermodynamics so bad the Simpsons cried?

[no_roads]

I always drive properly in my daily driver. I have a dragster to mess with and drag race with if I want to go fast and a jeep rubicon if I want to go offroading, but on the street I play it safe and careful. I'm not into hurting others or myself and I do my best to save gas like using cruise, not speeding, going only where I need to go to and so on.

[zjrog]

WHen we lived in Hawaii, I don't remember getting all that great mileage with my 88 Nissan Sentra. It is hard to get good mileage living where traffic is a pain. Which is why I orde my bike from Pearl City to Pearl harbor. 20 minutes by bike, or an hour by car...

[Ryland]

does the truck have a mpg readout? if so then I would sugest finding a nice short rout near the auto dealership, drive that rout with cruse controle on and take note of your gas mileage, then ask them if you can take a simaler truck to yours for a test drive doing the exact same thing, if there is a big differnce like it sounds like there is, then I would demand that they either fix it, or replace it because it was not as advertised, and you would at that point be comparing it to another vehicle that is under the same conditions, not someone else's test.
It would also be worth getting a scangauge, as they work as a diginostic tool to trubleshoot engine problems, and as a real time MPG gauge, this will alow you to both figure out what modifications are working, figure out what sensors or engine tunings make an improvment, and what driving habbits make an improvement.

Hawaii is one of the few parts of the US that I think ethonal would work, a friend of mine is living on the big island right now and tells me that there are times of the year when the air stinks with the smell of fermenting fruit, if all of that was collected made in to alcohol and used as fuel, hawaii's fuel price would drop, my friend is planing to do this on his own of course, and run his personal vehicles.

[tjts1]

Originally Posted by no_roads

I don't want to get rid of of it just yet, maybe if the gas price goes up to say around $10 I might get rid of it.

When gas hits $10/gallon your truck won't be worth any more than scrap metal. Unless you actually use the bet to transport heavy loads, sell it now while you can still get descent money for it. Isuzu is pulling out of the US market at the end of 08. They only sell mediocre rebadged GM trucks. When the dealer network is gone, nobody is going to want an Isuzu.

Good luck
Justin