Bad Gas Mileage Diagnosing Poor Car and Truck Fuel Economy

Hey, friends, it's Len here from 1A Auto. Today we've got a vehicle in the shop and we wanted to go over something to think about that's underneath the hood that's gonna affect fuel economy and the amount of power you've got in that vehicle. Let's jump right into it right under here.

On this particular vehicle, the air filter's located right here. On your vehicle you're gonna wanna find it. It might be located in a different area. I'm gonna go ahead and open this right up. I'll lift up the air filter and I'm gonna take a...oh my gosh, I'm gonna take a peek. Look at this thing. If you have an air filter that looks like this, it's almost like having a glove over your mouth like this and trying to breathe. Yeah, I can breathe, but I'm not gonna do a very good job if I'm trying to run a hundred miles, right? I'm not gonna be very efficient when it comes to breathing at that time. So, if your air filter looks like this, that's definitely something that's gonna cause poor fuel economy and it's also gonna cause hesitation when you're driving.

Another thing to think about if your air filter looks like this, you wanna make sure you look inside that box when you're replacing it. If you can see down in that box and you see a whole bunch of crud or anything like that, maybe you have a mouse in the house, you need to make sure you clean that out. Another good idea, if you happen to see all that inside there and you know that it's probably a mouse, I would follow that air duct and you can see right here, more than likely this is where that mouse is gonna be getting inside there. Is there a couple things you can do to try to cure that? There sure is. You can try to use a moth ball, put it inside a little bag and put it inside there, the smell of it's gonna more than likely try to keep the mice out. You can also try to put a screen. That's gonna help it. Whatever it is you decide to put on there, you wanna make sure that it doesn't restrict airflow in any way. Obviously if you have an air filter like this, it's gonna cause an issue. Could you just go like that and try to get the majority of the dirt out? Yeah, that might get you down the road a little bit further, but it's not gonna be helpful overall. And you definitely don't wanna take a blow gun and try to blow this out. By taking a blow gun and trying to blow this out, you might spread the fibers that are supposed to be catching the dirt and they're not gonna catch the dirt anymore. It's gonna get pulled through the air filter and then right down here to your mass airflow sensor.

So now we're gonna assume that you just found that you had an issue with your air filter like we did. You know that you've got the issue inside the box and maybe even you took a chance and you blew this out. Like I said before, you're taking a chance, of course, contaminating your mass airflow sensor. If that was the case, it's always a great idea to unplug it, unscrew it from the air filter housing duct right here, and you're gonna wanna take a peek at it. It has a little bubble in there, and that bubble is actually gonna read the amount of air that's getting pulled through and into engine and it's gonna meter it. That way there your vehicle is gonna know exactly how much clean air is getting pulled into the engine so it can match the amount of fuel so you can run as efficiently as possible. If it's dirty it's not gonna run very efficiently and you're gonna have very poor fuel economy. If you need any of these parts you can always check us out at 1aauto.com.

All right, friends, so we showed you a simple thing to check if you're having an issue with fuel economy. If you learned something and you like the video, click the like button and leave me a comment. I love to hear from you. While you're at it, why don't you go ahead and ring that bell and subscribe? That way there you can be kept up with all of our latest content. Thanks.

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