Shocking mileage drop

[IBguy]

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 just bought a Lance 815, very lightweight camper for our F-150 Supercab with a more powerful V-6 than the Tundra had. Our mileage in driving 280 miles to pick up the camper was 21.7 MPG, averaging 75 MPH. But on the way back with camper driving 65 MPH, it fell to 12.3!!! :? What the heck? :h

Any thoughts on why our MPG dropped so dramatically, and what, if anything, we can do about that?

[burningman]

If you read as carefully as you drive you’d see he ran at 65 with the camper on.

[SidecarFlip]

Anyone that goes down the road with a TC as heavy as a Lance on an F150 at 75 mph is asking for a death wish.

I sure as heck don't want to be anywhere around you.

That is insane.

Try driving more conservatively and your mileage will increase.

Better yet, get a more capable truck and drive sanely. It's a vacation, not the Indy 500....:R

[HadEnough]

As a data point... Arctic Fox 8something, Dodge Ram 2500, 10 MPG with TC on.

[1320Fastback]

If it's a EcoBoost it's one or the other, you can't have both.

[Reality_Check]

MitchF150 wrote:
.....The Eco part does not happen when you are in the Boost part of the equation....

Best answer of the day...^^^^^^^^^

[Photomike]

The MPG's sound right loaded with that size of a camper.

Did your previous camper have a cab over part?

Did you have tow/haul mode on on your way home?

Try dropping your MPH and see what happens.

[Grit_dog]

Start by doubting that you got 24/19 with your old truck and that will help.
Maybe you got that in optimal conditions briefly, but in general those aren't realistic numbers.
12mpg with a TC on a gas truck sounds doable though if you drive slow.

[diazr2]

I see where that Lance weights in at just about 2K that's not all that light. That V6 is doing pretty good at 12 to the gallon. I wouldn't worry about it too much. As long as the truck handles OK your doing pretty well.

[MitchF150]

If your V6 F150 is an EcoBoost, than that sounds about right..

I can get 21 mpg, not going 75, but once I hitch up my TT, I get around 10 mpg..

The Eco part does not happen when you are in the Boost part of the equation.

Tons of power from the little V6, but it does take fuel to make that extra power, so that's the trade off.

Good luck!

Mitch

[deltabravo]

Weight.
wind resistance from the large frontal Surface area
V-6 worked hard to overcome that wind resistance.

My Duramax only gets about 11 mpg with the camper on. I don't care what the mileage is. I bought the rig to enjoy life and have fun with, cost isn't a factor in that equation. If higher cost of fuel due to low mileage was a concern (and budget constraint), I wouldn't have bought the rig in the first place.

[Travels_with_Yo]

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" 🙂

[DutchmenSport]

Wind resistance on the cab over. Where height makes a powerful resistance sail.

[azrving]

Weight. Surface area being pushed. Gearing. Sounds like it did well.