Shifting at low RPM is a goodway to carbon up your apex seals which will cause big problems in the future.

 

The majority of the time I shift it at the speeds recommended by Mazda in my manual which comes out to around 2750 RPMs. Although, when I pull out off the detour road onto the main road I just pull out and keep accelerating and shift right into third so the RPMs get up over 5000s. I will also do that when I have to merge with the traffic from usually a stop to get onto 213, so if I shift at all the "recommended" spots my arm is either moving constantly or I'm not accelerating fast enough to avoid pissing off the other traffic. There I will usually just pull out and keep accelerating and will also skip gears to keep it smooth and it also gets the RPMs up. I use my cruise control on the way home from work but it's hard to do it on the way to work for more than just a few miles because the traffic speeds keep changing so much. I also can't use it on the country roads as their speeds change often and there are also a lot of curvy stretches you need to slow down for (just a tiny bit, unless there are other cars and they you pretty much crawl), so it just makes it really hard to use it all the time, but I do use it whenever I can.

 

Got 23.39 mpg (11.5 gal fillup for 269 miles) this past week driving home from the beach. Spent most of the time on cruise at about 65mph. The really odd thing was that when we got 310 miles on a tank, which worked out to just over 24 mpg, driving to Niagara three years ago, we were cruising at mostly 75-85 mph the entire time.

 

26K miles on my car and i have hit the 23-24mpg 5 times now!

tire PSI should be 4-5 less then maximum. if you lower your psi, you're increasing your surface fiction on your tires.

i shift at 3-3500rpms and use cruise control as often as you can.

also if you drive with your windows/sunroof open you will get less mpg. Use your AC. No, it is not the same as having your window's open.

9K a day will keep the carbon away right? if you do it once a day in first gear, you'll still achieve 20+ mpg.

 

Keep it under 3? Sheesh. I have a tough time keeping it under 4, especially in first gear leaving a stop light or something. The car behind me always gets right up my ***. I shift pretty quick too. *shrug*