Hi all! New guy here checking in from the upper midwest. I have been a lurking guest here for about 6 months now and decided to join. I started absorbing information here after becoming tired of my lifted ZR2 Blazer returning terrible fuel milage. While I did love the look, and the versitility of the truck it was basically a big wind plow. My city fuel milage was in the 10 to 11 mpg range, and highway was not much better. Additionally after spending a great deal of time on the road I realized I very rarely went off road.
I decided this spring to begin the process of trying to get the best milage per tank out of the truck I could. I pulled off all of the external accessories such as the roof basket, spare tire mount, front pre-runner bar, most of the external HAM radio-scanner antennas I have, and a number of other things that assisted in creating drag. The next item on the list was to get rid of the noisy, knobby tires I had. They were replaced with a much lighter, and quieter street/all-season tire that made a huge improvement in milage. I switched to a larger (15 inch to 16 inch) aluminum wheel that is a bit lighter than the factory S10 wheels. While it was not much, I ended up reducing the rotating mass on each corner by about 5 pounds, and reducing the over all profile of the tires. There has been some tuning on the ECM that is still a work in progress. I recently fabricated a new front bumper, and added a lower valance to try to clean up the air flow under the truck, and I have lowered the truck about 5 inches from where it sat.
Anyway, long story short I have had a huge improvement it my milage, my city has gone from 10-11mpg to 17-18mpg (with improved driving conduct) and my highway best to date has been 24.03mpg. I will share some pictures when I have reached the appropriate post level
Today
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