Fuel Cost: 13.5 months, 13717mi, 724gal, $2397, and 18.89MPG
Hi,
Recently got 20.5MPG on my last tank with some Seafoam and decided to add up all my saved gas receipts in an Excel spreadsheet.
I acquired my 1997 S500 from my sister last summer and drove it from NorCal to TX. I was suprised I was getting near 25MPG with cruise control on 75MPH and 3 passengers with a full trunk. Did the normal maintenance and tuneups.
I have put on over 19,000mi due to using it for business travel which is composed of 40/60 (city/hwy). Unfortunately, I didn't save the early gas receipts and my parents borrowed it for a month to go out of state. Some other receipts were also tossed/lost for some unknown reason.
So my summary is: 18.89MPG overall while spending over $2400 and burning an ozone depleting 724 gallons+ of premium fuel.
Overall, I am very satisfied with fuel economy for a 5000lb beast. Better than my 2001 Toyota Tundra (4600lb) which only gave me 16MPG. Best tank I got was 580mi. in Arizona which returned me 24.8MPG. I run the tires from 32-35PSI. If I kept my 2003 Toyota Matrix XRS which got overall 27MPG, I would have saved a calculated $700/yr in gas money. With a factory rating of 15/21MPG, I am real happy!
I have no idea how you get such good mileage, I drive somewhat harder than a normal driver, but even if I drive really conservatively I still only get 13 MPG city and 15-17 MPG *highway.*
Yes, my car is chipped, but it was like that even before the chip was installed.
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1994 S420-88,000 miles
Appearance:
Xenon headlights/clear corners, black S600 grill, removed badging, replaced front license plate with gold emblem, 5% rear tint, 45% front tint, AMG rear license plate frame
Performance:
HiPerformance Chip+Dual K&N's+Remus exhaust
The car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O088iKYWSAU
That is what I would guesstimate mine to work out to. I generally see between 17-19mpg with 70% suburban driving. Long interstate trips I see between 24-26mpgs. Overall, I cant say I can complain about the MPG's.
My LandCruiser on the other hand, what a POS. That bastard gets 10mpgs no matter where I drive it or how fast I drive it.
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/ James
I forgot to mention that I have a pair of K&N air filters but I can't quantify any improvement. I also meant to say I recently got 21.5MPG in my original post after 1 can of Seafoam which is unusual since I might get close to 20MPG on a tank with mixed driving. 1-1.5MPG improvement seems reasonable.
It seems like the S420 get 1-2MPG better everywhere!
I recently added some Seafoam to the crankcase. I plan to check it after 1 full tank of gas burned.
With revised fuel economy standards from here: Find a Car
I get a consistant 19.5-20 MPG in my coupe .. mix of city/hwy .. and it has never been seafomed or anything else
Hetzle: To answer your question - There is a big diff in 96+ 5spd vs older 4 spds. My 93 500SEL used to get 15.5 MPG even though it was lighter .. older models are also a bit heavier on gas because of the distributor cap/rotor having a parasitic drag on the engine... that combined with the higher revving 4 spd = 5mpg difference in my experience
another thing that I found made a difference for me was the grade of oil used.. for a while my mechanic used to recommend 20w50 but after a while I switched to 10w30 and 5w20 and I noticed an improvement right away. I will probably try a lower number next time.. is there a 5w10? or 0w5?
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96 S500 Coupe. Black on black, 18" AMGs
Royal Purple is the best oil for MPG & power gains. nothing else on the market is even close. I got 2mpg just by switching engine & differential oil in my E55. and that was 2mpg regardless of driving style or city/hwy. basically just added 2mpg to everything. The only other thing you can do really to increase MPG is get a performance crankshaft pulley, but that is only available for the S320s, S500s nogo. Either way great numbers, never seen anyone take such careful record of MPGs.
My last 2 oil changes have been 5qts. of Mobil 1 10W40 and 3qts. of 0W30 since I got 5qt jugs from Walmart. Last summer, after driving my S500 to TX, I changed for the first time the tranny fluid with 9qt of MB ATF and used Royal Purple also for the first oil change in the diffy.
I have always heard good things about Royal Purple and may try it next oil change. Where do you normally find it retail?
Linear Mode
