Mustang GT gas mileage

[animal]

A friend of mine has a 2002 Mustang GT and he said his gas mileage has gone down significantly in the last month or so. He hasn't run the A/C at all (it's been set to 'off') in order to track this down. His miles at the end of a tank when the low fuel light came on used to be around 300 but now the light comes on at around 230-240 and he said he's been driving it as he always did and it's been happening for 7-8 tanks of gas now. Anyone have any insight or things he can check out on his own?

[thhodges]

Dave

One item to check first is the air filter!!
Then check tire air pressure.
Could he be having a problem with the air mass sensor?? does it need to be recaled???

[BlueOvalBolt]

I'm no expert but here are a couple of thoughts:

1. He is running without cats, does this factor in somewhere with regard to the pcm setting richness?

2. Gauging gas mileage by the Low Fuel light can be very inaccurate. I have found my Taurus to vary 2 to even 3 gallons sometimes. I would keep a log of miles driven versus gallons used between fill ups to verify.

3. Has the cars overall performance changed?

Any thoughts from the experts?

[animal]

Thanks for the tips guys. I'll have him check all that stuff. The weird part about it was that it wasn't having this issue for probably 20k miles and only recently did it start happening. As far as I know it isn't much different on performance except for the normal fluctuations with air temp/pressure.

I didn't realize the low fuel light is inaccurate. Mine always seem to come on at the same time. I know when he put in the white face guage panel he had to take the pointers out and that's why he goes off the light, but that was WAAAAY before any of this started happening. I was going to tell him to reset the pcm by pulling the battery cable. Maybe if it relearns the adaptive fuel strategy it'll be better?

[animal]

Talkin to him more. He's been going by what he puts in and dividing to get mileage. It's been around 20mpg on strictly highway driving where it used to be 25 or so. Though he said he gets 17 with the usualy mix of city/highway which is in the range of normal mpg for that car. He's also reset the pcm since then I found out, and the filter was cleaned only a couple months ago. The only thing he said has changed since he noticed this was that he got new tires, but they are stock size and are properly inflated. Could just a different tire be causing it? He's gonna go check the filter again though as maybe there's some gunk on there or something.

Just peculiar since really nothing changed on the car to seemingly cause this problem. Could a clogged fuel filter, bad pump, injector ,or something like that do this? I told him to change it. Can the car throw diag codes without an SES?

[Yellow Iron]

Replace the 02 sensors. Loss of fuel mileage is the first thing that happens when they start to slow down. Plus if the exhaust has been on and off a few times (Evan's car?), they may have got dinged up. Let me know if you want me to install them, I have a hoist now. I also have a scanner for codes and datalogging. Thanks!!! Marv Z:beer: