Well ive been out of the game for a while but im back! I bought a 94 4Runner with a 3VZ, 4WD and auto trans. Its a very clean truck except for a little rust under the gas cap door. Anyway i drove it for just under a week and had to fill up. It went 200 miles on a tank and that was stretching it. The mileage came out to about 12.5 mpg. I used to have a 90 V6 4Runner but with a manual. I remember it had bad fuel mileage but this is pretty bad. What should I expect from this truck? Its bone stock too with the 31" tires. Thanks for any help.

 

My stock '95 SR5 Runner with 3.slo, 5 speed, 4.56 gears and 10.50-31s', gets 19-20 MPG on 87 octane 10% ethanol gas. 80% freeway driving and 20% stop and go.
When it had a dead spark plug, running on 5 cyls, it still got better than 15 MPG.
Even with auto tranny, yours ought to do better than 12 MPG.

 

I've got a pickup 3vze, 4.88 gears, 31" tires, auto, I get abt 12.5.

 

If you look at what the US energy dept rates them at, it's 12 city 15 highway. Those were my expectations.

I had a gold 94 3.slow auto 4wd. Exactly the same as yours. In winter (our winter where I live is extreme), I would get 180 miles to a tank, in summer I could get 220-230 miles. So in winter it was 12 mpg in summer it was around 15-16 mpg...

 

I get about 17 mixed 50/50 driving. But that's after some air, fuel, and exhaust mods to help things out.

Before that I was getting about 14 mixed, so probably around 12 if that were just city. So that's about right for a real old engine.

If you want to improve it (and HP) the best things you can do are 1. get up to date on all maintenance (cleaning tb, spark plugs, wires, seafoam if you want, etc). and 2. buy a cat-back exhaust system with high-flow muffler. The first item bumped my MPG's up about 1 and the second another 2. Paid itself off in gas savings already.

 

Yeah I plan on sea foaming it, new plugs and I found a nice intake that covers the filter and doesn't look cheap. I'll have to look into doing some exhaust work on it. Time to hit YouTube I guess haha.

 

You sure you're not driving with 4wd engaged ?

Do you have ADD hubs or manual ?

You could check to see if your front drive shaft is turning...

 

ADD. the transfer case lever is in 2wd but who knows. i do plan on going with manual hubs

 

The only time I ever got 12-13mpg in my 90 4runner 3vze manual 4x4 was when I had my 2jz in the back of the car totally loaded down driving over the mountains to do the swap.

around town 80% 20% fwy I got 14-16. All highway best I ever got on 31's was 18.6ish.