2004 camry, fuel problem & looking for suggestions
 

Hi All,

Thanks for reading and any comments will be appreciated.

my 2004 camry se (4 cyl, ~58K mile) gets a good fuel economy on highways (>30mpg) but a low mpg in city (< 17 mpg, I guess). I drive most of the time in town and the combined mpg is ~20 mpg.

Since I bought the car used and have nothing to compare to. just wondering whether it is normal. I also noticed the acceleration is sluggish (even slower than my old 1997 corrola). Anybody experienced similar problems and any advices?

Is the check engine light on?

The car should get at little higher overall MPG.

I suggest you find someone with a ODBII reader that can readout real time engine info when it is running.

The engine may have a bad A/F sensor, this can drive down MPG and make the engine sluggish.

Thanks for the info.

The engine light is off. But it was on for a very short time before and then somehow turned off.

it seems there are two related sensors and I am always confused. is this A/F sensor the same as the oxygen sensor? is it located on the front or back (chassis) of the car?

The O2 sensor precedes the A/F sensor in design. Your car most likely has A/F sensors as they allow better monitoring of the exhaust.

There is typically one sensor before the catalytic convertor (typcially you can see this one when looking in the engine compartment) and one after (under the car).

Typically the first sensor nearest the cylinder head goes bad.