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You know, if you’re driving a Jeep Wrangler, you’re always paying at the pump.
There are two things that work against you.
When you’re going slow in city traffic, stop-and-go, it’s the weight.
When you’re on the highway, it’s the height. It’s aerodynamics.
And you know what? The Jeep Wrangler is probably one of the least aerodynamic vehicles on the
road today.
If you bought your Jeep to wheel it, and that’s probably the best reason to buy a Jeep Wrangler,
you may be tempted to put it even higher up in the air.
But know, that’s going to work against you, every time you go to the gas pump.
You can look at using different gear ratios - there’s stuff you can fiddle with - but
you’re never going to turn it into something that gets thirty miles per gallon.
You can squeak a few more miles per gallon out of it, and here’s how you do it.
More than anything else, you need to learn how to light foot it, and here’s a good
way to think about it.
This is your gas tank, right? Your hand is your gas tank.
All that money is the gas in your tank.
The more time you spend on the throttle, the more pressure, the faster you’re going to
go through your gasoline.
It’s that simple.
If you have a newer Jeep, you might already have an average fuel economy gauge, and that’s
a good start.
If you’re driving an older Jeep, you’ve got nothing.
I’ll show you how we added a gauge to the inside of this TJ.
We mounted this ScanGauge right here. Easy enough.
We used to call this the jock mount, nothing fancy, just a little bit of velcro is holding
it in.
This Jeep is definitely a work in process. There’s a lot of stuff that needs to be
done yet.
You can hear it’s pretty loud, because it’s running straight pipes. It’s dumping right
after the cat and we gotta put a cat-back on it, because the old one rusted out.
The Dynomax was a nice muffler, we liked it a lot, but you know what?
Rust never sleeps.
Drive a Barbie Jeep? One that never goes off-road? Then you can think about using some low rolling
resistance tires.
You’ll want to take a look at TireRack and see what fits.
But, if you’re going to stick with larger, off-road tires, the one thing that you can
do is fiddle with the air pressure.
Never go above the air pressure recommendation on the sidewall.
Always look at your manual, see where the stock specification is, and then, maybe a
little bit more.
More pressure in your tire is going to lower your rolling resistance on the highway.
Remember, if you are off-roading, in the sand, and you’ve taken air out of your tires,
remember to air up before you drive home.