Not Very Happy, 2002 Protege Poor gas mileage

[240Z Turbo]

UPDATE:
The owner of Gem Mazda, Ken Wondergem, called me to discuss the events that occurred at his dealership. I will cut to the point, he is personally driving our vehicly to verify the poor mileage. BTW, the new plugs, 89 octane and extra conservative driving(3200rpm max) netted a world record 22.1mpg for our car. If he too verifies the poor mileage he will call in the district rep for Mazda to meet with us to discuss our options. I was relieved he has taken the effort to make us happy so we shall see what becomes of it on Friday when he calculates his fuel mileage. BTW, he gave us a MPV as a loaner while our car is being driven. Nice van with leather and a DVD player!

 

[mcstark]

240 - Hope he finds the same thing you did...and fixes or replaces your car. Then you too will love this car!

So do you and your wife fight over who watches a movie and who has to drive?

 

[igdrasil]

why 89 and not 87?

87 will give better results, mileage and power output

 

[1sty]

Dman dude, 22 mpg at best! My turbp MP3 gets better then that when I am tooling on it!
I have yet to see my P5 not crack 300 miles on 3/4s a tank

 

[andyandchristie]

by looking at your spark plugs that should tell you that something isn't right! thats alot of carbon buildup on them (not normal) anyways this means that your car is running rich, It could be one of two things
1. your ignition timing is off
2. or if it has a rough idle, check your vacumn lines for a hair line crack.
that would deffinatly cause your gas milage to suck!
I would take it to a different dealer. Its too bad that you don't live here, the dealerships here are very helpful.
I hope that you get your problem fixed! good luck!
-christie-

 

[240Z Turbo]

UPDATE:
Have you ever felt like you were in the Mazda 'Twilight Zone?'
Well, the owner put 115 miles on the car and claims 80% city driving and 20% highway driving. He says this netted him 24.5 MPG
Wow, and that matches our best mileage to date with the cruise control on driving from FL to TX and back 2 seperate trips.:wtf:
He says perhaps the new plugs have fixed the problem. Well, the new plugs netted us a whopping 22.1 MPG in the city. I am going to drive the car today 200miles on I-10 with cruise on 70mph and see what it gets. I am going to keep taking this damn car back until I am happy.:mad:

 

[240Z Turbo]

Dman dude, 22 mpg at best! My turbp MP3 gets better then that when I am tooling on it!
I have yet to see my P5 not crack 300 miles on 3/4s a tank

That is pretty darn good. My turbo setup gets 23mpg on the highway.

 

[xchristopha]

You must be leaking gas to have mileage like that.

 

[chuck]

Hereis my gas mileage

Automatic 2002 Mazda P5 bought in May 2001

K&N drop-in
Syn oil
Bosh plugs ( was worse with STOCK or NGK)

 

[uclap5]

wow, thats terrible.

 

[Ambassador1]

Take the car out for a nice pounding

 

[240Z Turbo]

Re: Hereis my gas mileage

Automatic 2002 Mazda P5 bought in May 2001

K&N drop-in
Syn oil
Bosh plugs ( was worse with STOCK or NGK)

Wow, and I thought I was crying! Have you taken the car to the dealer to complain? Also, call Mazda Customer service and complain to them. That is utterly ridiculous

 

[Mike R]

Dang, my turbo stang got better than that-and I drove it HARD!
I'd be taking the P5 back if it was getting that bad.

 

[240Z Turbo]

UPDATE:
Installed the new K&N drop-in filter and drove 178.9 miles being very gentle on the car. Added 8.602 gallons of gas upon fillup for the whopping 20.8mpg. DO NOT purchase a Protege 5 automatic if you can help it as it would appear there is, in fact, a general problem with this car. You have seen others besides myself complain of the poor gas mileage with the automatic only. I will drive the car on the highway Sunday and record the mileage. I hope to get the Mazda district rep. involved to address what I feel is a problem with this car.
BTW, pulled the plugs today and they look fine as compared to the plugs at the beginning of this thread.

 

[erockp5]

If you read the latest consumer reports buying guide they do a review of a P5 auto. It lists the high, low, highway(150miles) and the average. Their high/low was 33/19 and the average was 26MPG.

I have the manual and the worst I've gotten is 26.5mpg. That was a/c, stop and go driving, with a bike on the roof. Average for the last 8000 miles is 29.5mpg. My high/low is 37/26.

So it looks like the normal auto tranny is part of the gas mileage problem. Although those posting here seem to have other issues also.

 

[mcstark]

Just did my second fill up and averaged 22.8 MPG -- although I was pretty heavy on the accelerator most of the week. All city driving. Doesn't it always seem that you're running late when you have a great driver's car?!?

For the record, I have a `03 P5 with manual...so far 700 miles on her -- yea, I'm past the break in period. Now we can Zoom Zoom!

 

[acidbug]

Don't forget all..The Protege5 auto version..has a 4 speed automatic..

The MTX Version *manual tranny*..has 5 speed!

Chas

 

[chuyler1]

This is my output from quicken. I try to keep track of my milage by recording my trip and odometer on the receipts. In May I moved out of my house and into an apartment to cut my drive in half. Before I was driving 75-80mph on the highway, now I drive 45-50 on back roads. I went from 27-28 avg to about 30 avg.

How quickly 15,000 miles comes!

 

[hygieene35]

Ok this car has several problems. mine has 119,000. I did the "tune up". I took the car to Reynolds Mazda in Norman Oklahoma they told me the cold air intake had cracks in the rubber. it had cracks but if you take a can of eather based carb cleaner the car should rev up - it didn't. I replaced the cold air intake just for s**** and giggles, next they wanted to replace the ignition coils... I said no paid the diagnostic 100$ fee. Took the car to Edmond Mazda. This dealer wanted to replace the fuel pump. I did it for 960$ did not fix the poor gas problem or spark plugs problem as you show in the picture. the car would stall at idle. I pulled off the EGR valve off and it was stuck open with lots of carbon inside and around the valve. I replaced the valve for 160$. The car ran smooth after that and had no emission codes on dash. Oh and I replaced the spark plug using the "best" bosh factory plugs and replaced the coils. I still got poor fuel results shown here at 19 mpg city and 22 hwy. I figured why the poor gas mileage the car runs at 2,600 rpm at 62 miles per hour, 3,500 at 75mph----or 1,700 in 5 gear at 30 miles per hour. The car needs a 6 gear to bring the RPM down so not to waste gas or such as Overdrive like on my friends 5.0 liter V8 Mercury Cougar that has the engine running at 1,200 RPM at 70 MPH. There is nothing wrong with this car it just doesn't have a Overdrive Gear inside the transmission. Simple problem fixed. Buy a new car like my 2002 Toyota Corolla 5 speed manual that gets 32 city 39 hwy with 240,000 miles on it... buy buy Mazda!!!!!

 

[MrGiggles]

Ok this car has several problems. mien has 119,000. I did the "tune up". I took the car to Reynolds Mazda in Norman Oklahoma they told me the cold air intake had cracks in the rubber. it had cracks but if you take a can of eather based carb cleaner the car should rev up - it didn't. I replaced the cold air intake just for s**** and giggles, next they wanted to replace the ignition coils... I said no paid the diagnostic 100$ fee. Took the car to Edmond Mazda. This dealer wanted to replace the fuel pump. I did it for 960$ did not fix the poor gas problem or spark plugs problem as you show in the picture. the car would stall at idle. I pulled off the EGR valve off and it was stuck closed with lots of carbon inside and around the valve. I replaced the valve for 160$. The car ran smooth after that and had no emission codes on dash. Oh and I replaced the spark plug using the "best" bosh factory plugs replaced the coils. I still got poor fuel results shown here at 19 mpg city and 22 hwy. I figured why the poor gas mileage the car runs at 19,000 rpm at 62 miles per hour----or 16,000 in 5 gear at 30 miles per hour. The car needs a 6 gear to bring the RPM down so not to wast gas or such as Overdrive like on my friends 5.0 Mercury Cougar that has the engine running at 15,000 RPM at 70 MPH. There is nothing wrong with this car it just doesn't have a Overdrive Gear inside the transmission. Simple problem fixed buy a new car like my Toyota Corolla that get 32 city 39 hwy with 240,000 miles on it... buy buy Mazda!!!!!

It does have overdrive. I've been consistently knocking down 26-28 mpg average, mostly rolling down the highway at 75. Spinning 3500rpm, not 19,000. There's no car engine on this earth that spins that fast.

Bosch plugs are not recommended for this car. Always replace the spark plugs with the factory recommended part.

Toyota? Yawn... Be happy you don't have one of the mid-late 90's Corollas that really didn't have overdrive in the automatics, and were tapped out by 70. They are reliable but I will not own another Toyota.. They've made 3 models that aren't terribly boring in the past 30 years, none of which are easy to come by.