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Ford Explorer Community - Maintenance - Modifications - Performance Upgrades - Problem Solving - Off-Road - Street
Explorer Forum Covers the Explorer ST, Explorer Sport, Explorer Sport Trac, Lincoln Aviator, Mercury Mountaineer, Mazda Navajo, Ford Ranger, Mazda Pickups, and the Ford Aerostar
Tire inflation, air intake (I have MAC Products), cat-back exhaust, comp chip, don't stomp on the gas. These will all help to some degree. Talk to Aldive on this forum. He has gotten 32mpg in his V6 Explorer. He said synthetics all around got him 2-3 mpg.
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I just noticed Aldive posted his link above. Forgive me, I'm slow.
My wife drives a 99 with the five speed and the OHV engine. She does get better mileage than I do, since she shifts early and lets that high torque motor work.
In general driving style will do more to affect mileage than anything else. That being said, obviously keeping the motor in a sharp state of tune will help along with the intake and exhaust upgrades already mentioned.
The one modification that I have made that I have not seen mentioned here yet is the installation of electric cooling fans. I removed the stock fan and plastic shroud, and replaced them with two Derale electric fans. These run independent of each other. My mileage gain was between 1 and 2 mpg. I also picked up increased throttle response as obviously the engine no longer has to spin the fan. One other benefit is the air conditioner is much more efficient (more cool air) on a hot day when sitting in traffic as my electric fans run at high speed even though the truck is at near idle speed. I wired one fan to come on any time the AC is running.
Everybody's getting 20 MPG in their Explorer!! I have a '91 Explorer 4.0L, im lucky to get 12 mpg, and im not that hard on the truck. What is goin on with my truck? what can i do to my intake w/o spending money to give me beefier noise and better mileage? i also have 150K miles on my truck, could that be why too? Also, up until now its been below 30 degrees, does that hurt mileage too? i've only had the truck since christmas, so i dont know how it runs in the warm weather... please help me out!
I finally found a post that I know about. GASOLINE. The difference that you find in gas from a major vs mom & pop is that mom & pop get blended gasolines. This means that when the gasoline was made, it was off spec. So Texaco/Shell/Exxon etc sell it to traders and blenders. These companies then put in additives such as MTBE to try and get the gasoline on test. I have also seen them blend it down to get more gasoline. Say their gas had 88 octane in it. That's better than reg, but not as good as plus, so they add fillers into it to bring the octane rating down and bam, more gas to sell. Been doing gasolines and crudes for 20 years now. I think I have seen it all.
HotDogs
I found that the tires you put on make a difference! Highway or all season tires will always get better mileage than off road tires or snow tires! Hey! Every little helps!!! But i'm a snow and ice tire freek so between the "winter gas" loss of mileage, the heavy load of (emergency stuff) I always carry with me and the snow & ice tires my mileage always drops down no matter what I drive!
BTW Hot Dogs: Nice read!!!
