Shocking mileage drop
Ten years ago we had a lightweight camper (don't recall the brand or model) on my Tundra Supercab with a V-6. That camper dropped my mileage on the road from 24 to 19 MPG. Many years later, we j...
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I have a couple thoughts ... one is that your V6 is likely turbo charged and needs RPM to really generate power when needed. The additional aero drag and weight of the Lance is making the engine "spool up" more and there is a marked drop in efficiency when it does that. We had a couple of the Ram Pentastar V6s. They were a 3.6L normally aspirated engine and got over 22 mpg routinely on long trips. When we pulled a 3500 lb single axle travel trailer it dropped to 14.2 mpg. The V6s don't have the torque of the V8s to hold the higher gears and downshift more to compensate. I know your previous V6 didn't seem to exhibit this tendency but I'd venture it was normally aspirated and that the camper at the time was much lighter than the Lance and likely had a lower profile and may have been narrower as well ... speculation on my part :-) I'm assuming it was also a typical cabover truck camper ???
The other thought would be for you to estimate what the weight of your camper is, and then stop at a Cat scale and weigh the rig fully loaded. You might be surprised.
Another thought that comes to mind is that your reference data is not large enough in scope. Truck camper mileage can vary dramatically depending on wind direction and strength. Traveling to Canada from Georgia last year our Ram 2500 with a 2,400 lb Adventurer TC (fully loaded) averaged a respectable 13.9 mpg over 8,600 miles. Imagine my surprise when a day spent crossing Montana we averaged 20 mpg over 270 miles .... can you say "tailwind" :-)
The other thought would be for you to estimate what the weight of your camper is, and then stop at a Cat scale and weigh the rig fully loaded. You might be surprised.
Another thought that comes to mind is that your reference data is not large enough in scope. Truck camper mileage can vary dramatically depending on wind direction and strength. Traveling to Canada from Georgia last year our Ram 2500 with a 2,400 lb Adventurer TC (fully loaded) averaged a respectable 13.9 mpg over 8,600 miles. Imagine my surprise when a day spent crossing Montana we averaged 20 mpg over 270 miles .... can you say "tailwind" :-)
