[zjmjgk]

Hi, I'm a newbie. I bought a 2003 Jetta back in May of this year, so far we love the car. We have already put about 13000 mi. on it. After reading all the post on here about timing belts I got a little nervous. The car is going on 8 yrs. old and 86k. At first I thought I had 10k or so before I needed to change it then I saw the debate back and forth about not going more than 5 yrs. I decided not to take any chances and have started the timing belt change. This website has been a huge, huge help I would have never attempted this without this site. So far all is going well. I have followed all the instruct. to detail and bought all the necesarry tools, after reading horror stories on this website. I do have one question about fuel mi. We have only been getting about 36 mpg., I thought it would be a little higher. Any thoughts on this? Thanks !

 

[chittychittybangbang]

There are many causes of low mpg. The first is winter fuel. Cold temps also mean longer warm up = lower fuel economy.

That isn't bad for city driving and if you have an automatic, that's fine. Driving style is also a big player in fuel economy. If you want to dig deeper, do a compression check, check for any error codes, check the fuel injection IQ (search hammer mod in the FAQ) and check the injection pump timing.

Also, post moved to mk4 section since there's some technical questions.

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