Increase Mileage - Start with Plugs
Crude prices appear to be setting in place at the all time high levels. With this, gasoline has become a pretty premium commodity. The price of gasoline appears to be set for a long time at record high levels and many commuters are left trying to find the most efficient ways to increase mileage. To start saving money at the fuel pump, consider this cheap tip to change your spark plugs.
Understanding how your engine operates is the first key to increase mileage. The basic explanation is that very small amounts of gasoline and air are introduced through the intake valve into the piston chamber. Here, the piston moves up and down to compress this mixture into a more powerful, condensed state. Then, your spark plug kicks in with a spark of electricity that ignites that mixture of gasoline and air.
After this spark is introduced, the mixture “explodes” and the resulting expanded gaseous state is the power used to operate your vehicle. During normal operation, an engine will repeat this process thousands of times every minute (thus - the term RPM’s , or Revolutions Per Minute). Each cylinder in your engine produces this exact same process over and over again - for example if your car has a V-6 engine, there are 6 chambers doing this at the same time.
The action of creating the supercharged gas through the spark the best transfer possible can increase mileage. If the spark plug is losing some of its output before it reaches the compressed gas and air mixture, the resulting combustion will not have as much power available for use. A spark plug can lose it’s power through seals not being tight and corrosion of the spark tips. A new spark plus with platinum tips will result in a much higher transfer rate, reducing the amount of cycles needed to extract the same amount of power. This increases mileage by using less fuel.
Having clean, high quality spark plugs can increase the efficiency of your engines performance, and in return, increase mileage. Many spark plugs can increase mileage by upwards of 2-5%. While this may not sound like a huge increase, changing your spark plugs (at a cost of roughly $4 per plug) will pay for themselves within that month for an average driver.
