M.P.G.

I DONT CARE, I sure didn't buy my MH with the thought of an investment,or saving on gas money.I bought my MH to have fun and see places before I get to old.I like sleeping in a bed with no bugs,i like driving 60-65.I like stoping when i want to, I just plain enjoy going down the road and doing what i want to. ( IT DOESNT GET ANY BETTER THAN THAT )

I had a '98 3/4 ton 454 Suburban pulling a Cougar 305BHS TT weighing about 9500# and got 8+ MPG. I upgraded to an '01 PSD Excursion with A&E intake,DP tuner and 4" turbo back exhaust and improved to 10.5 MPG. Then 4 years ago,I bought my Tradewinds 7390 with the 330 Cat turbo and who cares about the mileage, 'cuz as said before it's what we wanted and could afford. I get from 6-8 mpg hand calculated and that's fine.Ran it thru the Cat shop a bit ago for an IAPVC and they downloaded the computer and it read that I was getting 7.5 mpg for the life of the MH on the road and 7.2 overall. That's for an '01 rig with 108K on the odometer.

I log all our gas. I am at 26k miles averaging about 6.4 MPG, that is towing, not towing, heavy load, light load, 65-70 and 55-60. I can look at the current tank, 4 tank, 10 tank and lifetime averages. Our best has been taking it 55-60 without the tow, a bit over 7.

I have a scan gauge II, I like it as it gives me an idea of how I am doing, but it is nowhere near accurate. Last trip it reads 7.0, I filled up and 6.35 is what I got. now that could have a little bit to do with how full is full, but that is a consistent difference. I will read up on the scan gauge to see if I can 'adjust' it.

We did 'chip' the coach and that made a difference, not so much in mileage, if any, but in the pleasure of driving. The shifts are much better. Rig stays in gear longer and down shifts in smaller steps.

I would love to have a 35 foot 20,000 pound gas rig towing a jeep that gets 8-9mpg people talk about. I don't think it is happening. I could however I think make a suggestion to the builders that might make a difference. now that we have flat screen TVs they could rake the front end back a foot and a half like before TV was the big thing and they started sticking deep Tube type TVS up over the front end. I would bet that sloping the front end would cut air resistance considerably and likely increase mileage.

This MPG talk reminds of when I bought new bathroom scale at K Mart. It always said 165 # when I was 295. When I took it back 3 of the employees wanted to buy it themselves. Get the tag and forget the big Mac for the dollar burger to make up the difference. You will want a tag after the first crosswind.

The way I see this whole MPG thing is that I get 23 MPG pretty consistently. The way I figure is that I put as many miles on my tow car as I do on my MH. I will set up camp and explore in the tow car in a radius around the camp site then move on. I have keep accurate records of Mpg over 75k miles of travel. So my MH gets 8.7 Mpg and my tow car gets 40 mpg so if equal miles is put on each I come up with 23 mpg ave. I would suspect that many on this forum put double on their tow car because they stay longer at a camp site which would raise the Mpg even higher if you tow a small high MPG tow car. Wouldn't the total fuel usage be a better way to look at it?

rgatijnet1 wrote:
Pull a toad. That way you will get TWO vehicles from point A to point B for about the same amount of fuel, which basically doubles your fuel mileage. :B

You must be a government statistician :W

When people ask me about gas mileage, I tell them, I didn't buy it for its
mileage. We full-time and there are too many uncontrollable factors that
effect mileage, i.e. wind, terrain, towing, overall weight, and speed.

Thank you, these are the answers I was looking for.

I hear the tales of "10" and "11", and I smile. I need a calculator like they have! If you are over 30K in weight plus a toad, you will not see 10+mpg. If the stars align and you do, enjoy it! Most ISC/ISL class (and CAT equivalents) putting out 380hp or more will not see 10mpg. The good news is that there is a basement number. No matter how heavy, how much wind, or how fast you are going, you should not see any worse than about 6 mpg. If you drive at the perfect speed/drag to RPM ratio (for us, 67mph) on flat land without much wind, you should see almost 8mpg. We average about 7.4 mpg in Colorado, and on flats about a whopping 7.7mpg. Over 8mpg in a big coach is graaavy........

p.s. we are 42 ft long, no tag....tag is a weight thing, not a length thing.

11 mpg only from a salesman's lips or in your dreams. Just maybe at 50-55 mph with a tailwind going downhill in Kansas.

My 40' HR Endeavor has averaged just under 7 in 32K miles, all of it in CO, NM, AZ and WY driving mostly around 65 mph.