Ok, so i drive about 20 miles each way to work, and 10 miles of that is freeway at 70mph or so.

My 93 Sidekick 4 door 16V with 2" OME and 2" body lift, with ARB bar, 30" MT's, and no roof rack gets me a consistent 23mpg tank after tank.

I've driven my wife's  95 Tracker 8V stock 2WD to work for the past few weeks and got my 2nd measurement today and it was 26.5mpg average.

So I thought i'd share this because even though it feels like i've increased my wind resistance a lot with the lift and bull bar on the front and everything, my MPG are still very reasonable.  I was driving the 2WD just to conserve gas cause i though it got closer to 30mpg, but now i realise that the difference isn't that great.


The coolest thing about all this is that my 4-door is more comfortable to drive and the stereo is a helluva lot better than the 2-door, so it doesn't really matter which one i drive for the 3mpg difference.

BTW, my check engine light has always been on on my 4-door, so i figure if i ever fixed it, maybe my mpg would go down, so i'll be leaving it as is.

I just refilled the tank in my stock '93 Sidekick 4 dr JLX automatic.  The mileage calculated out to 22.7 MPG with most of it commuting on the interstate at 65MPH.   92k, engine just rebuilt.

So you aren't doing too bad

That long wheelbase and the interior silence makes it pretty easy to decide what to drive to work every morning...

We'll see what happens when I drive down to the '06 Fabfest (1000 mi round trip) on Memorial day and apply a Digger suspension lift to it!

mine was getting about 23 to 25 when I first replaced the motor. Then the oxygen sensor took the threads out of the manifold when I was trying to replace it, and I had to take bailing wire and wrap it around the old oxygen sensor to hold it in (redneck fix), and it got 20 mpg. then I drove up in altitude and the check engine light came on, and it got about 18. Now, it is running on 3 cylinders (#1 cylinder not getting spark) and it has used about  3/4 of a tank to go 70 miles . My car is going to hell in a handbasket. It is breaking faster than I can fix it, and since it is my only car and my daily driver, all I can do is drive it and try to fix it, and if I cant fix it or it is too expensive to fix, I will really have no choice other than to drive it into the ground  :'( Its really unfortunate, since I had high hopes and big plans for this car.

My wife's 4 door '92 Kick has 235 all-terrains and a 2.5" spring lift. Otherwise it is a stock rig with a 16 valve. It put's my 4 door to shame. It gets 29 MPG on highway trips and I drive about 75. If I take it easy it will get 30. Even on a snowboarding trip with a couple guys, board bags on the roof and driving in blizzard conditions it got 27 MPG. Mine is lucky to see 23 MPG. I am begining to think something is wrong with mine. 

Just bought a '93 four door. Manual transmission.
Appears totally stock.
Has a rebuilt motor with about 65k on it while the car has 128k.
First tank got 27+mpg.
Added a ski rack and carried more passengers and got about 25.5 mpg on second tank.
Lots of highway driving, but up steep grades.
Damned pleased with the mpg so far.
Don't know if it's hype, but have a K&N air filter coming.
We'll see if it makes any difference.
Not sure I'll be able to tell with the variety of driving I do.

I Love my Suzuki!

are you guys compensating for the larger tires throwing the odo reading off? I know it made a big difference on mine. I thought I was still getting good mileage with the 30"s but after taking 10% off its not so good anymore!

are you guys compensating for the larger tires throwing the odo reading off? I know it made a big difference on mine. I thought I was still getting good mileage with the 30"s but after taking 10% off its not so good anymore!

I calculated out the % of change due to larger tires on both rigs. I then reset my odometer with a highway milemarker during a trip. At 100 miles I checked the differance. This gave me a % to factor in against my odometer readings at fill-ups. For example my '96 is about 9.6% off from actual. When I drive 100 miles my odometer only reads that I travelled just over 91 miles. So when doing a fill-up I check my trip odometer and it says 238 miles + 22.8 (9.6%) =  260 miles. If it takes 11.5 gallons to fill it up then I only got 22.5 MPG. If I didn't factor in the actual distance covered it would look like I only got 20.7 MPG.

Woa... Don't take 10% off your MPG reading! Add 10% to your trip, then divide by gallons. Your really hurting your numbers there.

With larger tires you actually traveling farther than the trip odo states. Do it that way. Taking 10% off your mpg math is not the right way, If I did that on my Jeep I'd be getting 2mpg and I know it's more like 8-10.

Mine has calculated out to be 12% off.  I take miles x 1.12 = actual closer miles, then divide by gallons.  Generally 230miles is what the odometer says, and it's more like 258 miles.

are you guys compensating for the larger tires throwing the odo reading off? I know it made a big difference on mine. I thought I was still getting good mileage with the 30"s but after taking 10% off its not so good anymore!

I am still bone-stock on the drivetrain -- shod with 205s.  I Imagine that will, indeed, change after a set of larger tires.

With 35's and SAS I get 18-20 driving back and forth to work. Not sure what it would get on the freeway.

94  4 door 16 valve 5 speed 130K on it.  stock is Averaging about 26 to 27 mpg at 85- 90 mph on the highway... (And I am still getting passed like I am standing still) The I-5 between LA and San Diego is like civilian stock car racing... nuts

so far all it has is new plugs and wires from napa (65 buck for wires from napa OUCH  ) but they are a sexy blue color and I am absolutely certain that the kick goes faster with them .

I will be doing all the aformentioned upgrades and tracking mileage as well so we will see how it works out..

I had a check engine light on too but the truck ran awesome. So I went over to see Kevin PPLTRAK and we pulled the codes. It was an EGR valve. So we poked around and found a bare wire that was on the top of the valve cover. cleared the codes and no more check engine light..

Later
Hutch

With the stock 4.30 gears and 3 speed odo pushing 31's my Tracker gets about 18mpg on a good tank so far.  Can't wait to get those 5.12's in.

If you're seeing over 20 feel good, don't complain to hard.

That said, it still gets about 5mpg more than my Ranger was getting lately.