burbio so i leave it in gear

 

yes! you can drive using no gas at all if you coast in gear.

 

If you are down shifting towards a light it won't impact your gas mileage, the engine essentially shuts off the injectors. Downshifting towards lights in a smooth and planned manor will help you mello out your driving style and extend your brake life at the same time.

Like other people said;

1) Use regular fuel, not mid or premium. The Fit is designed to run on that fuel.

2) Cruise control on the highway helps alot

3) Keeping the RPM's low is good, but too low will actually reduce your mileage. If you cruise around in 5th gear in 35mph zones you are not doing yourself any favors.

4) Check you tire PSI, should be balanced across all 4 tires & at a minimum of 32. You can increase it a few pounds to 36psi for an extra MPG... (and yes to the eco-guys I know people are running at 100psi and sidewall max, not looking to get into a debate, save it for dedicated threads)

5) Plan your moves, for instance if you see a red light that might turn green slow down in advance and let it turn green before you come to a complete stop, it will save you some gas on regaining your momentum.

Basically a lot of it is your habits, but with that said I am pretty heavy on the gas pedal (ok, really really heavy) and I still get amazing mileage.

It might be worth it to run some injector cleaner through the system and do an oil change, failing that borrow a scanguage and identify where you are burning most of your fuel at.

 

Brakes are way cheaper than engines. Using the engine as a brake increases engine wear and reduces its useful life.

 

Try a different gas/gas station, maybe the car just doesn't like that gas.

 

It is not hard on your engine

In 10+ years of driving I have not ever had to replace a single engine... not even so much as a head gasket.

With that said I get about 120,000kms+ to a single set of brake pads thanks to gearing down.

 

I completely disagree.
When you accelerate, foot to the floor, shift at 4K.
When you cruise, it's all or nothing on the gas. You floor it until you're going too fast, then coast (in gear) until you're going to slow.
It's called pulse and glide, and I get 50-60 MPG, sometimes 70. And I don't drive slow.
Don't brake for turns. Don't brake ever unless absolutely necessary.

 

Also keep in mind that there are actually a number of us on this forum that cannot reach the MPG that others are getting no matter what. Don't give me the usual trash about how it's the driver that matters - I've tried enough that I've given up on being a fuel efficient driver and I still get 26mpg a tank driving around like my car's on fire. No point sacrificing my joy in driving to save that 2 mpg I got from being a nitty Scangauge-focused driver who always stayed under 30% throttle position.

In my case, I drove like a granny while using a Scangauge - highest average MPG for a tank I got was 30mpg , and that was for 90% freeway driving. Average using Scangauge was 27-28 mpg, and right now driving w/o scanguage I get average 26 mpg.

Scangauge and strict monitoring of your driving habits WILL increase your MPG by 1-2 unless you're already an absolute nit when it comes to driving. Just realize that there are others out there who can't get good mileage out of this car no matter what we do, and I think most of us have given up and either moved onto other cars, or just enjoy driving the car w/o worrying about getting the best mpg possible anymore (aka me). I still get much more than I used to get in my Mustang, so I'm happy.

 

Driving like a granny is what is causing your bad mileage. You have to drive like a maniac. All or nothing on the throttle! No brakes!
You can still go fast. In fact, go as fast as you want, just pulse and glide. I always speed.
I already drove like a maniac, so hypermiling was an easy transition.

 

I hate working on drum brakes. I'd rather change a clutch than drum shoes. They got all those springs and everything. When my rear brakes wear out, I'm just gonna replace them with discs.
We should have an argument about whether it is harder on the engine to idle, or to coast in gear. They're both pretty easy for the engine compared to other things it does, like making tiny explosions thousands of times per minute to propel your >1 ton vehicle, passengers and cargo.
If my engine wears out at 150K miles instead of 300K, well then I'll rebuild it to max overbore, or swap it. When parts wear out, that is the perfect time to upgrade. I plan on having this car forever. I can deal with rebuilding (upgrading) the engine every 10 years.

 

Ok, that's probably the worst advise I've ever seen in a car forum...and you'd seriously rather replace a clutch than turn drums and install shoes? Seriously?

To the original poster: FWIW, I've only had my '08 Fit Sport for two weeks. The first tank I got 33mpg without even trying, mixed city driving with A/C on occasionally. I then drove all freeway 120 miles round trip averaging 75-80 mph using cruise control as much as possible and used less than 1/4 tank of gas. As I said, I just got my car, it's a year old with 15k miles on it. The dealer I bought it from just had the 15k service done at a honda dealer, so the MPG I'm seeing is with with new, correct viscosity oil, brand new OEM air filter, and properly inflated OEM tires.

As someone else mentioned, most cars gas guages will drop quicker on the second half than on the first, you have to do the math to get accurate numbers.

As you've seen from the responses there are many, many different things you can do that will affect your fuel economy. I don't subscribe to "hypermiling", or overinflating the tires, or coasting in neutral. My advise to you; try to drive smooth, use 87 octane, check your airfilter, run some fuel injector cleaner if it hasn't been done in a while, run the tires at the pressure specified in your owners manual, and change your oil. Most people here prefer to do their own work, and as such they won't suggest this: take your car to a honda dealer, have them check everything out and tell them you're not getting good MPG. It might cost you some money but there could be something wrong that you aren't aware of such as dragging brakes, a partially clogged catalytic converter or muffler, partially clogged or dirty injectors, or incorrect fuel mapping by the engine management computer, which can happen if it's getting incorrect information from a sensor.

JQ

 

changing ur octane is not gonna give u shitty gas mileage. every car mowners manual will even tell u that 87 is the minimum the car will take but recommend premium for economy and health of the engine. i have never ran 87 in the fit and i still get 38mpg, and driving 70 on the freeway :O. put ur tires at 40 psi and see how that does. shift at 3 and as said above, try and time red lights its real easy if u can get a glimpse of the other lights u can see whos getting green first. thats about the best i can do for ya.

 

There COULD be a problem, but the thing is, Honda dealerships are not going to give a shit about "bad mileage" unless there is a engine/maintenance code involved. If there is no code popping up from the Fit, they're not going to help you out. I'm speaking from experience, and I've seen a few others on this forum who have said the exact same thing regarding getting help from Honda dealers.

They said they'll at the least take the car out for a drive and see how the mileage compares to EPA estimates - guess what the odometer showed when I got back 2 hours later when they called me to pick the car up? Exactly the same as I left it.

 

I love wrenching. I'm currently doing a tranny swap on a BMW E30 I bought for $100, and building it up for autox. I'm also restomodding a '68-ish Yamaha YCS1C. In my free time, I do this stuff anyway. But drum brakes are so annoying. They got all those springs, you know? Disc brakes it's like, 4 bolts off, caliper off, compress caliper, old pads out, new pads in, caliper back on, 4 bolts on.

And regarding mileage advice, 40 MPG for me is bad mileage, and other people can only dream of 40 MPG. I'm sharing how I consistently get amazing mileage.

 

Fair enough, I can respect that. Unfortunately most aren't that mechanically inclined (myself included, I'm a rank amateur at best). And I'm extremely jealous you bought an E30 for $100. I'm pretty sure the emblem on the hood is worth at least that! They're great autocross cars. Cheers!

JQ

 

Gasoline weighs roughly 6 1/4 pounds per gallon. Take out half a tank (5.4 gal) and you've lost 34 pounds the car isn't having to haul around anymore.

Oopss... Looks like I read that wrong.

I think it's probably because the point where the needle reaches the Full mark is well before the tank is actually full. I do note that my estimated fuel economy gets better as I approach 'E' rather than worse. Go figger.

 

the fuel gauge isnt extremely accurate

 

Ditto...

Well except about replacing drum brakes It usually takes me like 30 mins to replace them and reset the position. What kind of drums are you changing!! A clutch would take almost a day if you were doing it at home, providing everything went smoothly!

Becides there is absolutely no evidence that shows an engine wears out prematurely due to downshifting. It is just using the compression of the engine to slow the vehicle down, barely any signifigant loads are put on the engine. Everytime you accelerate you put at least 4 times the load on the engine!

Like I said before, never had to replace an engine. I had an old BMW I always downshifted in with over 450,000kms on it... never even did the head gasket and it ran great.

 

are you sure about that? i thought as long as the engine is running, its value continues to work and engine is still having gas burned ....

 

if you're in neutral or idling, that's true. but if you leave the car in gear when you coast, the engine will spin and use no gas. that's just the way it works.