Posted on: Tuesday, June 15, 2004

DRIVE TIME
World's best, most esoteric advice on how to save money on gas

By Mike Leidemann
Advertiser Staff Writer

Sure you know all the best advice for getting good gas mileage: Tune up your car, keep your tires properly inflated, avoid stop-and-go driving, yada yada yada.

If pigs could fly, we'd all drive when nobody else was on the road in a perfectly maintained vehicle. Trouble is most of us have to get to work by 8 o'clock every morning, and weekends are just too short to be wasting time using a tire gauge.

So we Americans just keep driving the same old car, the same old way. Or at least we did until gas prices went through the sun roof this summer. At these prices, you might as well move to Europe and ride the trains.

So maybe it really is time to get serious about conserving a little fuel.

That's why we here at Drive Time have spent the past week looking for the world's best, and most esoteric, advice on how to save money while driving. We're way beyond oil changes; instead, we hunted down the tips that only a spendthrift — or someone who thinks $2.50 per gallon is chump change — could ignore. We've taken our advice from AAA, Gasprices.com and a lady we know on the North Shore who drives up to 90 miles per day. The result is this summer savers' list:

• Shut off your car at intersections with long lights. Idling wastes more fuel than restarting the engine.
• Streamline your car. Extra weight caused by mothers-in-law, surf racks and other non-essentials makes your engine work harder and burn more gas.
• Buy a better quality oil, preferably a synthetic one with a friction-reducing formula. It can improve fuel economy by as much as 12 percent.
• Drive at a steady, slower speed. (OK, we know what all you people out there on the H-3 Freeway think about that, but that's what it says here in the material we gathered.)
• Always shift into higher gears. Traveling at fast rates in low gears consumes up to 45 percent more fuel than necessary.
• Turn on your air conditioner. Yes, air conditioners reduce gas mileage but open windows create a drag that reduces mileage more.
• Buy gasoline in the coolest time of the day — early morning or late evening. Gas pumps charge by volume and the gasoline is densest when it is cool.
• Never fill tank beyond the first "click." Overfilling results in wasteful sloshing.

Reach Mike Leidemann at 525-5460 or mleidemann@honoluluadvertiser.com.