Power saving, mileage improving ideas

[michigandiesel]

I get about 22 to 23 MPG. I get what I think is poor accelloration, especially with 4 people in the Sportage. I put in the purple air cleaner and the highest end Korean sparkplugs. Are the delux plugs capable of hurting power? They did not seem any better than the standard ones? Should I consider replacing the coil packs and signal wire? What ideas and sources of parts can you recommend? I had heard about an electric fan replacement for the belt driven fan. How about a lower restriction exhaust? Would that mean headers, different muffler, different or missing catalytic converter? How about a different ECM chip? I appreciate any ideas and links. Thanks, Paul

[Darter]

Well you're pretty much all over the board there. The two easiest (and cheapest) ways to improve mileage is to maintain higher tire pressures (while staying under the max stamped on your sidewalls) and driving at or below 65mph. MPG significantly drops at higher speeds.

All the other stuff mentioned is only going to provide marginal improvement, so you're likely going to have to do ALL of them to see a real difference. Unless you plan to drive the car into the ground (read, more than 10 years), you're probably not going to realize a net savings from a full exhaust swap or chip. Those kinds of upgrades are generally done for performance increases, which many people are willing to pay extra for.