Tips for increasing gas mileage

Since I am on vacation 6 hours away from my home in Atlanta I did some digging to see what I could do to make my drive smoother, safer, and cheaper. These steps are simple and easy for anyone to do! A little maintenance goes a long way with cars.

Steps to take to increase life and efficiency of your car:

• Change Oil on Schedule: A well oiled machine works best. This also means the oil should be changed according to your car's manual specifications. In general it is 3,000 miles for regular oil and 5,000 for synthetic.
• Keep Tires Properly Inflated: low pressure in your tires means the engine has to work harder to move the car. Keeping them properly inflated increases gas mileage. It also makes it safer to drive!
• Run Air Conditioner Less: You can save gas by manually turning the air on and off as you need it. Leaving it on all the time burns more power and gas.
• Change Brakes When Squeaky: Change the brake pads when they start to squeak. The squeak is an indicator built into the pads to let you know they are low and need changing. Waiting too long leads to much more costly repairs on your brake system
• Tune Up on Schedule: Having tune ups done as recommended by your car's manual prevents a lot of expensive repair by changing fluids, belts, and other inexpensive parts before they wear completely out. 
• Accelerate Lightly: Flooring the pedal after each red light burns more gas. It is also rougher on the engine and transmission. Lastly, it is also unsafe to "gun it" all the time.

Performing the above regular maintenance on your car not only saves money but keeps you and your family safe. You also head off a lot of expensive repairs down the road by preventing the problems to begin with! You invest a lot of money into your car and you should take care of it to get the most return from that investment!