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First thought of every car owner in Nigeria is how to adopt fuel economy by ensuring optimum fuel consumptions in their cars. In this article we try to explain the maintenance you need to carry out regularly on your cars that can help reduce fuel consumptions. To start with, the quality of fuel supplied from the filling station nozzles matter most when considering option to reduce excessive fuel consumption. When poor quality fuel is supplied to your tank, it is like possible that apart from such fuel destroying some of the fuel line systems; more fuel would be required for combustion to take place. Other factors are:
1. Constant Engine oil Change:
Skipping regular oil change from your engine can result to poor performance, forcing the engine to work harder thereby causing high fuel consumption. Whilst it’s mostly recommended to change engine oil after 5000KM, VONOS AUTO will recommend that car owners from Nigeria should not allow up to such kilometers especially as over 80% of cars used in Nigeria are above 100,000Miles
2. Cleaning of Fuel Tank, Fuel Pump and Fuel Filters:
Fuel supplied to Nigeria market is not as clean as we think. Sometimes contaminants from the filling station reserve tanks, transporting tanks and many other factors can result to fuel being contaminated. It is necessary the car fuel tank is dropped and properly clean to prevent fuel pump blockage. Contaminated fuel tank is one factor that destroys fuel pump faster. The debris that could not be filtered by the fuel pump filter can contaminate the fuel pump and destroys. And if the fuel pump is of low performance, it can result to excessive fuel wastage. At VONOS AUTOS repair center, we advise customers to do cleaning of tanks every 2years
3. Air Filter:
If the engine air filter is dirty, the ration between the air intake and fuel injected into the engine will vary and ultimately resulting to high fuel intake into the engine combustion chamber. Request your engine air filter to be changed every 10,000 Miles especially as Nigeria environment is extremely dirty.
4. Spark Plugs:
The mixture of air and fuel into the engine is constantly compressed to the mount of the plug with spark combustion that resulting firing of the car. If the mount of the plugs are clogged with oil especially for those that do not service cars regularly, it delays combustion which eventually results to high fuel intake. VONOS AUTO will recommend Nigeria car users to change their plugs at every 20,000 to 30,000Mile if you are lucky that bad fuel has not damaged it.
5. Oxygen Sensor.
Malfunctioning or clog oxygen sensor can result to poor fuel efficiency. The function of the oxygen (See our next article) is to air fuel mixture, emission control, and catalytic converter efficiency. So if the sensor is bad, the ECU (Brain Box) gets wrong messages on air fuel mixture.
6. Air Flow Meter:
AFM send messages to the ECU on the amount of air going into the engine. If the AFM is dirty, wrong messages are sent to the ECU and can cause high fuel being injected into the engine as the case may be. The air flow meter should be clean by special chemical design to clean it (available at VONOS AUTOS)
7. Injectors, ignition Coil:
The primary function of the injectors is to inject proportionate amount of fuel as directed by the ECU into the engine. If the injectors are bad, the engine may not be firing normal and can result to hesitations. Ignition coil on the other hand helps to increase the voltage from the battery usually 12V to over 20,000V which ultimately supplies such voltage to the plugs and thereby ignite the air-fuel mixture in the combustion chamber.
Aggressive driving: Rapid acceleration, constant speeding and harsh braking can significantly increase fuel consumption. It’s important to drive smoothly and maintain a consistent speed to improve fuel efficiency.
Other factors that cause high fuel consumption are; underinflated tires that force the car to move, excessive vehicle weight, poor aerodynamics such as opening windows, roof racks as these forces engine to work harder in order to overcome resistance. Traffic congestions that result to frequent stop and go movement decreases fuel efficiency and possibly result to high fuel intake.
At VOONOS AUTTOMOTIVE ENGINEERING (https://vonosautos.com/contact-us/) to help clean all your fuel components for optimum fuel consumption.
