I have a friend who owns a base Caliber and wasn't happy with her gas mileage. Somehow she decided on running a synthetic blend and swears her MPGs increased by 5... Is this possible or not??
Actually it can. Synthetic Oil reduces friction in the cylinder walls and lowers temps. It will not improve MPG's that much though. Maybe 1 mpg if lucky. lol The cost difference may not be worth it for mpg's, but certainly will give a longer life span on the motor.
I was thinking that too...but basically came to the conclusion you did. To me...that is a no lol. not saying Synthetic is bad obviously....just not gonna save you $ at the gas pumps lol
Wow...if she had said .5, sure no problem. But IMO, if she really saw a 5 MPG increase there had to be some other variable(s) she doesn't know or doesn't want consider to get that much of a gain. EDIT: H3LL I consistently see a 3+/- difference in my MPG, just depending on how...spirited...I drive any particular week.
The engineers did not do a good job with fuel trims on this CAN C/BUS software. In stock form at highway cruise my short term would be 0 and long term would vary from +4 to +10% depending on load and throttle %. Long Term should be ZERO at cruise with short term making up the minute differences. I don't know what the hell they were thinking but this is a very good reason on why the MPG isn't what it should be with the Cali's.
You should run synthetic oil in the car whether its an SRT or not, synthetic is better. I recommend ordering Chinese Food that brings a fortune cookie with it and hope it reads "You will get better gas mileage" and be sure to stick it to the dash board.
How old is the car? You can also see an improvement after the motor is broken in and if that coincided with the sythetic change she would see more, not sure about that much more but more for sure.
If she changed it *thinking* that she would get better gas mpg then I totally believe it. You would have a tendency to drive in such a way as to get the results you were looking forward to (unconciously or not).