1500 mile road trip avg 17.3mpg!

I bought mine in Montana and drove to Florida same week. I'm short st 5ft 9 and the truck is super comfy. Great for me. Zero issue on the trip.

 

I'm amazed at the varied MPG's people get here. I took my truck from Kansas to Colorado and back, and averaged in the high 15's while running around 75-80mph in the extremely flat regions. I don't drive the thing hard (I have other vehicles for that), and I have never seen trips at over 20 mpg (except when I was at very high altitude - over 8000 ft). Even my daily commute is mostly highway at around 65-70mph and I don't think I ever have seen 20mpg on the display when I shut the truck off. On my old 2003 4Runner, I saw a 1-2mpg increase if I used non-ethanol, but that doesn't seem to make much of a difference in this.

 

I recently made a trip to Kentucky from VA in my 16 OR. I averaged 18.5 with the ECT on going over the mountains in WV 75mph the whole way. I have also had the latest update done on the PCM.

 

Hills/mountains don't really effect fuel mileage. In fact I've always done better there than on flat interstates. Unless you always drive uphill, which isn't really possible. The wind resistance of driving over about 65 is what kills fuel mileage.

The last long road trip for my Tacoma was in May of 2016 when we drove from GA to the Grand Canyon and back through southern Utah then Colorado. I kept the truck as close to 70 as possible on the interstates in fly over country and was averaging about 20 mpg. There were several tanks in northern AZ and southern UT on 2 lane mountain roads where due to the nature of the roads 55-60 was about as fast as it was safe to drive. And for every mile going up, I could coast down an equal amount and still maintain 55-60 mph.
There were stretches 20-30 miles that I could coast. Fuel mileage went up to 22-23 mpg on these roads.

Getting back on the interstate in Utah I still maintained about 20 mpg from there across the Rockies and into Denver. But from Denver east as far as Kansas City I drove into a strong headwind. Even though I still maintained 70 mph I was getting the wind effect of driving 80+. My fuel mileage dropped to 16 mpg for a couple of tanks. From KC on back to GA there was no more wind and fuel mileage went back to 20 mpg.

And in November I made a similar trip with a similarly equipped F150 with the 5.0 V8. Overall the Ford got 1.5-2 mpg worse fuel mileage than my Tacoma.

 

With OVtune your numbers would likely be 2-3mpg higher. I average what you do and my truck is lifted, 32” tires and weighs 6k lbs

 

I've made that same trip with my truck twice. Averaged in the 17s without using cruise on my second trip.. Let the truck lose 5 mph with slight hills and then regain 80 mph on the way down. I got 16s in my first trip using the cruise. Most of the time there is a crosswind from roughly Hays, KS to Limon, CO that kills my MPG. I have gotten 25.7 mpg from Colorado Springs to Limon driving 65 mph through hilly terrain.

I have one tank in the truck at 20.4. The rest have been between 17.7 to 19.5 for the most part. And I drive 80mph pretty much on every interstate around here.

 

Normal driving around town we average 19 mpg. Highway 23 to 25mpg, 65 to 70 mph.

 

Has anyone tested the tonneau cover manufacturer's claims that a tonneau cover gets you 12% better gas mileage? I bet the differences we are seeing here between vehicles are due to speed, road surface, wind, driver's driving habits, suspensions, tires, weight, etc.

Could a tonneau cover also make a difference?

 

Drives 80 in a V6 truck then complains about MPG...lol

 

I also owned a jk with 35s. Whole different experience for me. Had to regear to 5.13s to get it to stay in over drive. Also even after regear only got about 16 to 17 mpgs. Was the 3.8ltr piece of crap motor.

 

Can’t even imagine how you were driving to average 80mph. That means highway cruising well over 80 (100mph+) to make up for local driving and acceleration. You’re lucky you got better than 10mpg.

 

The truck is capable of 22-25 mph on the highway give or take depending on weather, speed, how much climbing vs descending, etc. If you are much below that then it's either weather, hills, or bad driver (w/respect to gas mileage).

I drove from Colorado to Oregon and back and my overall trip average was around 22 mpg. Here is the final leg from Ogden, UT to Colorado through Wyoming with lots of hills and I was anxious to get home so didn't make any attempt to be conservative. In fact, there was a few times I was doing 90 getting around trucks.

 

That's wrong. You use more energy going up a hill than you save going down a hill. #physics

 

The problem is the lack of torque in these engines at the bottom of the rpm range, as well as the weird inefficiency of the programming of the Atkinson cycle off the minimum throttle - the combination of these things mean anything besides driving slowly and very conservatively (in your case fast) has a massive impact on MPG/efficiency. These trucks are only somewhat efficient very very low in the throttle position, anything beyond that you take a large hit.

 

Absolutely. I've found with my specific truck the sweet spot is about 50-60 MPH. All I was commenting on is that when you get above 75 MPH efficiency is going to fall off, but it's not specific to just the 3G truck. My 2G would get nearly the same (low) economy if I was in the 75 MPH range than the 50-65 MPH range.

 

http://memecrunch.com/meme/BKH13/anti-ford-mem/image.jpg

 

Couldn’t embed that one?

 

that's crazy good mpgs, my 2.7l with 4 speed auto gets 21.5-22mpgs with stock tires and setup

 

Not really sure what the point is. I have driven a lot of different cars and trucks of various sizes and engine configurations. This is the only vehicle that I have driven that saw a substantial drop at highway speed. Are you saying I should be satisfied with substandard performance just because it says Toyota on the label? I have a friend with a Colorado with a v6 that gets 24 on the highway. How is it possible that Chevy can do that and Toyota can't?

Drove at night. There is literally nothing between Jacksonville and DC to slow you down. Spent the time running between 75 and 85.

 

you need to drive under 70 mph in order for these engines to achieve maximum fuel effeciency, driving 75-85mph it obvious why your getting lousy gas mileage.