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Las Cruces, NM Car Consumer Discussions

no overdrive

by oryxman on Fri Nov 07 16:24:07 PST 2008

Hello, I have a 1995 dodge 2500 diesel and it will not shift into overdrive? They replaced a overdrive selonoid still wont shift. Has anyone had this prob and what do you think it may be? Please help Rob las cruces

Re: Toyota Corolla MPG experience [terceltom]

by tucson_mike on Wed Aug 27 07:18:15 PDT 2008

I should have been more specific - if a need to stop in city traffic is looming up ahead, I actually just put the clutch in and shift down through the gears as needed (keeping the clutch disengaged) as my speed drops until a complete stop is made and then go to neutral to relax that left leg. As several people have noted, the goal is to smooth out your accel/decel profile to minimize braking. Also, that 42MPG I got from Santa Fe to Las Cruces was pure I-10 driving with no stops and the cruise set at 78MPH. I did earlier try a reduced speed in Arizona on I-10 (78 down to 69 - any slower is a hazard on that road) and saw no real difference in highway MPG). All of this is with the AC running as needed.

Toyota Corolla MPG experience

by tucson_mike on Tue Aug 26 17:45:29 PDT 2008

I purchased a used 2006 Toyota Corolla (with 17,000 miles) this last Jan 2008 and have been following some of these discussions with interest and tracking my own results. This is my first post since it seems I have enough data now to make some comments. I certainly haven't reviewed all of these interesting posts, so excuse me if I am repeating some well known minutia. First of all, I think it does make a meaningful difference to drive a manual transmission. Just a little bit of coasting in city traffic has improved my MPG. Tucson is cursed with no useable interstates, so most of my tanks are pure city driving. And I always buy the least expensive Costco gas I can. My first few tanks (again pure city, no highway) I was getting between 32.2 and 32.7 MPG without too much effort - just going to neutral when you can see the light turning red up ahead. Looking through the web threads for any meaningful path to improvement (beyond the obvious stuff - correct tire inflation, good tuning) I decided to try a couple. Tried the Lucas Oil Upper Cylinder Lubricant fuel additive which purports to clean your injectors and improve MPG. After a few tanks, I recorded an average improvement of about 0.5MPG. This was probably just more careful driving and more coasting as it has dropped back to where it was after I lost focus on this. The car did seem to run a bit smoother on those tanks with the additive and it may well make a more meaningful difference in a larger engine. But with such a small engine in already good condition, it is not too surprising it didn't help much (trying it now in my Suburban, but that car is sort of permanently parked right now so slow to get data) Next I tried replacing the stock air filter with a K&N Filter - Nothing fancy here just the one that drops into the same spot as the paper one. Doing this seemed to pick up another 0.5MPG so I was getting about 33.4MPG in pure city driving after doing both (and I did not add the Lucas product to each tank, just two tanks actually). Again, this might also be just more focused driving to see if it made a difference. Have sort of dropped back to my more normal driving style over the last few months and see about 32MPG on average - still real good. Again, the K&N product probably doesn't hurt and might certainly have more impact in a larger engine. Now for the interesting part. In pure hwy driving in Arizona, I was getting about 36MPG - frankly dissappointing looking at the EPA estimates. However, I recently took a 2200 mile roundtrip to Estes Park CO with a lot of mountain driving. Seemed the higher altitude I got, the better my MPG. Going from Durango to Estes I got 44MPG going up and down mountain roads. Does anyone know if this is an altitude issue, temperature issue, different gas in CO or what?? Coming back down from Santa Fe to Las Cruces, I got 42MPG - pretty respectable and consistent with the comments above. Anyway, like the other people posting, I am very pleased with the Toyota Corolla MPG. I don't know of any other car this size that comfortably breaks 30MPG city and (sometimes) 40MPG highway. Strangely, you don't see it mentioned too often in the high MPG car summaries. Maybe too boring or not a new enough model, but the 5speed Toyota is the best bang for the buck I can find. If there is a better (or comparable) one out there (in a four door sedan) I would sure like to know about it since my teenage son is now looking and wants the same MPG but not the same car as his old man got.

no title

by 312capri on Wed Jul 16 13:37:43 PDT 2008

I've noticed that the dealers both in Las Cruces and Alamogordo NM and the two Honda dealers in El Paso TX seem to put all of there Honda vehicles on sale --- except for the Honda CR-V.

Re: Welcome back! [imidazol97]

by mackabee on Tue Jul 15 10:55:02 PDT 2008

"Can you explain further on that event? " I was a young tender lad of 23. My wife and I and little Mackabee jr. needed a car bad. We had an AMC Rambler which we used to call "El poderosito" which means the "Small powerful". I bought the Rambler in Las Cruces New Mexico and drove it to Millington Tn. where I was going to a Navy school. The car was ok but had some issues. On the way to TN. I pulled over in Texas in the middle of nowhere to take a pee. I couldn't hold it until the next town. As I get out of the car I almost fell as the ground was wet and very slippery. As I got back in the car I realized we were stuck! I tried and tried to get the car out of the mud but to no avail. A passing motorist must have called the tow truck or they towed a lot of cars there as one came over in a few minutes. "It's going to cost you $50.00 bucks to get you out of the mud." the tow truck driver said. "$50.00 bucks!!" I exclaimed. You got to remember this was in 1980 and I was just a poor second class petty officer then. So I paid him the 50 and he pulled us out of the mud. We continued our trip. We made it to Tennessee without a problem. Later in the year the starter became loose and one of the bolts that held it together fell off. I remember one winter morning having to put the starter back on as it was almost off the car. After I got done with training we drove back to California and the car made it all the way without a hitch!! Once in San Diego we decided to look for a new car. I had read somewhere that Japanese cars were the best made at that time and we headed out to look at a few. We looked at Nissan, back then it was still called Datsun, Toyota, and Honda. Although Hondas you could only see them in brochures as the dealers had none in stock every one of them was pre-sold. That would have been the time to be selling Honda. So we looked at a couple of domestics also. I was not too familiar with the Japanese brands and they looked rather small to me. We almost bought a Buick Regal and to this day I still don't know why we didn't since it was big and roomy and very nice. I think the sales person was not very enthusiastic and actually was kind of desperate IIRC to sell the car. They discounted it quite a good amount and I thought there must be something wrong with the car if they are trying to unload it so easy. So we left. We went to a Toyota dealer and test drove a pick up truck or as they were called back then a "mini truck". Mrs. Mackabee thought I was crazy for wanting a mini truck and started talking some sense into me. "What are we going to do when we have another kid?" she asked me. "You're right." I replied. Back then I didn't like many of their offerings as they were rather ugly looking. I did like the Celica as it was a bit sporty looking and I'd seen a few on the road. "Let's try a Celica then." I told her. So we get into a Celica ST. No a/c, roll up windows, manual locks, and am/fm radio. What we call in the biz, a "strippy". Me being an ignorant small town boy from New Mexico didn't know you could negotiate the price of the car and to save some money I skipped the GT which was very well equipped but a couple of thousand more. The ST was $7245.00 MSRP. I remember them "giving" us $200.00 for El poderosito which is what I owed on it. So it was a wash. They kept working us on payment the whole time. I remember the salesperson coming back and asking for more money. "Can you do $200.00 or $210.00?" he would ask and my wife would tug at my shirt if I said we could. It was our first new car purchase and by the time it was all said and done we walked out of there with a new car at full pop, 19.90% interest for 48 months thru Ford Motor Credit, and I don't even remember what the payment was. I did refinance the loan with our credit union a couple of months later for quite a lower interest rate. A few years later around Christmas time I went to the local Target store and there was a bin with lots of books under $5 dollars. Since I like to read I perused the inventory and found a gem of a book which I wish I still had. It was Remar Sutton's "Don't get taken, the insider's guide to buying your next car". I leafed through it and found it interesting so I bought it. It was the best $1 buck I have ever spent in my life! I went home and started reading it and didn't stop until I finished it around 3am in the morning. I dug up my old buyer's order and looked the figures over and man was I pissed! I could have paid 1k less and gotten a lower interest rate through my credit union had I done a little homework. That book is also the one that introduced me to Edmund's price guides which used to be sold at any book store, convenience store, and you could find them in the library too. So having learned my lesson the next purchase was 180 degrees the opposite of this one. But that's for another story another day. Mack :shades:

Re: Post removed [mackabee]

by cdnpinhead on Sat Oct 27 05:41:13 PDT 2007

"NMSU" Are you a Las Cruces refugee? I served time in Santa Rosa myself. I always said that if we could do with 49 states (or 47 when I lived there), I knew which one to axe first.