Trip in Jan OKC to Galveston and back; just 3 people and lots of luggage, no towing: 12.47 mpg at 70 MPH
Round trip couple of weeks ago, solo, OKC to Grapevine, Irving, TX area; drove no faster than 60 MPH. Dash was indicating 16.4 MPG when I went to fill up;
actual was 14.67 MPG for the 475.6 mile trip which included about 36 miles of city driving in TX. The dash was indicating 17.9 MPG when I first entered the DFW area then it started dropping to 17 IIRC as it went into regen
. It was at 15.1 indicated MPG when we started trip home. I was very surprised that the indicated MPG was so far off from the actual MPG when I filled it up; and I was disappointed to say the least.
Just returned home from trip to Tenkiller Lake in Eastern Oklahoma pulling fifth wheel just shy of 14,000 lbs. The trip to the lake had about additional 40 miles since we pulled 5th from storage to home and returned it to storage on return trip from lake.
Plan was to keep it at 60 MPH on trip to the lake. This resulted in it downshifting on every little hill; ended up keeping it between
60-65 MPH. Cruise set to about 63 MPH, this puts me a little over 2000 RPM. Most hills it would pull w/o downshifting; some I would disengage cruise and slow down to 60 (or less) but w/o downshifting.
MPG ended up at
9.63 MPG.
Trip home (which was actually 40 fewer miles of towing the fifth wheel and also 308 miles vs. 353 on first tank) resulted in
8.21 MPG running at
70 MPH w/ cruise; only downshifted on a few steep grades.
Both fill-ups were with less than 15 miles to empty per the dash; both included about the same type of running around with respect to the non-towing miles. The non interstate driving was at posted speed limits when possible. Both trips include about 15 miles of narrow winding road with steep grades around the lake. Fill-ups were to the brim and generally my dash indicated MPG is .6-.8 optomistic with reality. I have reported hand calculated MPG here unless otherwise indicated. I reset the MPG every fill-up.
My 06 made the same trip in NOV 07 and I got 11.49 and 11.65 MPG respectively. I was running 65-70 MPH but the water tank was empty since I was pushing the GVWR of that truck. The GVWR on the fifth is 16,000 but we don't have it loaded to that point; and we have weighed it on the scales.
The 08 pulls much better and does better on the hills holding speed. I have other trips pulling the fiver and they are typically between 8.5-9.0 mpg so far.
The truck currently has 18,604 miles and 557 engine hours.
Bob
