Blutoyz wrote:
To clarify a little bit...
I had three adults (I may count for 1.5 actually) and a dog loaded just for a one week visit, nothing in tow, and was very light on the throttle. I avoided the downshift for hills when possible just because the revs were making the pooch nervous (one of them there vicious pit bulls). I didn't attempt to get up to speed quickly and just let the momentum build at what the drive train seemed comfortable with. The rig seemed to enjoy 55-60mph more than 65 anyway, I think that is the main factor for me.
Essentially you were hypermiling. I did that a few times in our old Class C and it was astounding the mileage improvement I could achieve with that V10! However we were usually rushed to get to our destination (job cramping my desired vacation lifestyle) so we often had to push the speed.
People who have never experience hypermile driving have no idea what it can accomplish. One part of it is to work with the terrain: speed up as safely as you can on downhills and drive at optimal RPM uphill without regard to your speed; you will likely be going quite slow by the time you reach the top of a long grade. Of course, vehicles behind you will get annoyed. I usually only did it when I was doing an overnight drive so there were few other vehicles on the road to annoy.
