If your vehicle has a resettable trip odometer on the dashboard you can put it to good use tracking a couple of things:
- Easier gas mileage calculation. Reset the trip odometer after you fill up and before you drive away from the pump. The next time you fill-up, make a note of the number of miles driven (on the trip odometer) and the number of gallons you needed to fill up the tank. Divide the number of miles by the number of gallons to get your average gas mileage since the last fill-up. If you fill up once a week, you can start to get a feel for the mileage you should be getting, and whether things are going wrong.
- Miles since last oil change, or maintenance check, or (insert your favorite regular maintenance here). If you want to change your oil every 4,000 miles, just reset the trip odometer when you change the oil. If you want to check tire pressure, fluid levels, etc., every 500 miles, do the same thing.
My car has two trip odometers, so I can do both of these things. I know that it's not rocket science to do these things without a trip odometer, but if you can do them with the push of a button, why not?
thanks for putting this up. i always used this trick for finding the mileage.
I take it one step further — I keep a gas logbook in my glove compartment. I write down the total miles, miles on the tank, price per gallon at the pump, and number of gallons. I then bring it home and track my MPG in Excel.
May seem a bit overboard, but it really does help you keep an eye out for problems. If your MPG suddenly drops 25% and you are driving like normal, you've got a problem.
While we are discussing odometer hacking, there are many ways to help beef up your cars performance and get better gas milage. I have been checking out peoples theories, and well, it comes to the trueth. Most milage saving programs do not work, or work so little it hardly matters. I found a site that shares 54 different, real ways to save on milage and improve your cars performance. If you'd like to check it out click on over to save-at-the-pumps.com
Good idea on using the second trip odometer for major maintenance. I usually use it when travelling so I can keep track of my current tank of gas on odometer A and the full trip mileage on odometer B. But your suggestion is more useful.
I had to use this trick these past couple of months. The last time I got my oil changed, they didn't change the service sticker and I thought it was easier to watch the trip odometer than to have to add ~3000 miles to the sticker.
It's also handy to use the odometer to keep track of miles if your employer reimburses you for driving. On occasion, I fill in for a colleague who does a lot of offsite stuff, and it's nice to just set odometer A and let it run until the end of the shift! Now, if they would just help out with the car insurance, and increase the reimbursement to adjust for expensive gas!! That would lead me to want to help out more often.