RE: 88' getting very bad gas mileage

["Patrick Bureau" <pbureau@home.com>]

Well in theory, if you have a bad alternator, the coil will not provide
enough current to the spark plugs and inconsistent gas being burned in teh
chamber can occur, resulting in poor acceleration or power loss, as for
using more fuel, I am not sure it is would be related to taht Alternator,
but possibly it is.

    ___  ___________
   /   |/_  __/ ___/  A Texan's Scirocco 1985 8v
  / /| | / /  \__ \   http://www.longcoeur.com/scirocco
 / ___ |/ /  ___/ /   (AIM) patricdlc, (ICQ) 32918816
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-----Original Message-----
From: owner-scirocco-l@scirocco.org
[mailto:owner-scirocco-l@scirocco.org]On Behalf Of M. W.
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 9:38 PM
To: M. W.; scirocco-l@scirocco.org
Subject: 88' getting very bad gas mileage


In the past couple of days, I've been getting VERY bad mileage on my 88'
16v. I havn't caculated the exact number but I think its somewhere in the
neighborhood of 12-16 miles per gallon. ACK. I've put about 35-45 miles on
it and the guage is sitting is at 3/4. I've noticed the guage acting a bit
odd, when I'm moving down the highway it'll read between 3/4 and full, but
when I'm idling it will read the previous amount initially and then slowly
make its way down to 3/4. I noticed this a few days before when I thought I
had a little under 1/2 a tank only to find it read 1/4 in the parking lot. I
thought maybe the guage was just wrong, but driving it a bit more put it
down to 1/8th and when I fueled up I put 10.3 gallons in. Last time I took
it into a shop I was told the alternator was noisy and should be replaced
soon. I think it's pretty much at that time now as I've had a couple
instances while driving around a parking lot in low gear and my battery
light would blink on momentarily. The car is also due for an oil change, not
to mention I STILL havn't gotten around to replacing the fuel injector seals
to try to fix the unsteady idle. Any ideas? Is it likely that my alternator
is not providing enough power and is killing my gas mileage? Could that also
be the reason why my fuel guage is acting strange? Should I try to get ahold
of a new alternator or a rebuilt? Etrik mentioned to me that maybe I just
need to replace the brushes...

88' 16v
Fort Lewis, WA

Thanks,
Matt Wagner
mattwagner@softhome.net




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