Bad gas mileage

[cometcougar]

Thanks for all the ideas and advice everyone. I really appreciate it. Just thought I'd give an update - I just got a pertronix for it, and hope to put that in this weekend along with new distributor cap and rotor just for good measure. Also put on a fresh new air filter element. Carb seems to be adjusted well, and I haven't found any leaks along the line, which is good. I'm also going to pull the plugs and just make sure they look good, and gap them, and do the compression check while I'm at it.

I checked the tire pressure and made sure the brakes had proper adjustment too. I am really liking how accessible everything on this car is to work on! My daughter got her license last Tuesday, and has been putting more miles on it than I am now. Now I've decided it will get a dual master cylinder very soon too.

Thanks again, and of course let me know if you think of any other ideas for getting my gas mileage higher.

[Jeff W]

My latest Popular Mechanics talks about gas mileage. One thing they mentioned was the accuracy if the odometer. Many cars are off a few percent, some motorcycles as much as ten percent. Our older cars, with all the goofing around with tire size, gear ratio's and the like may be off even more. This inaccuracy in the actual distance traveled would really skew the final calculation. If you or a friend has a good GPS that measures mileage, you may want to see how your odometer compares to the accuracy of Billion dollar satellite.

In other words, your gas mileage may not be as poor as you calculate.