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RE: 15 + mpg with V10 in 29 footer?
Using engine braking, "in all gears", and under all conditions is also going to equate to higher RPMs, greater fuel consumption, and lower gas mileage.
Do you mean that taking your foot off the gas, letting the engine idle, and then using your brakes while going down a hill uses less gas than taking your foot off the gas, letting gravity rev the engine for vehicle hold-back, and not using your brakes does? Any additional gas usage from this is not intuitive.
Granted that the engine is revving but it's not burning more gas that's causing it. It's my understanding that modern fuel injection engines suck in no gas above idle maintainance - even if downhill runs are "force spinning it" - unless the gas pedal asks for more gas above idle. (This was probably not the case with carbureted engines, which draw gas based on spinning engine vacuum.) When in TOW/HAUL mode going down hill I many times do not depress the gas pedal at all, as I am letting engine braking entirely control speed.
Also note that when in TOW/HAUL mode overdrive still is available and active - so the gas savings are still there when cruising in TOW/HAUL mode. It's just that when getting up to cruising speed in TOW/HAUL mode, less torque conversion slippage is going on because the transmission is locked-up solidly in gears longer until cruising speed is reached.
From the .pdf link you provided, TOW/HAUL mode does considerably more than the previous "OD ON/OD OFF" switch on Ford's pre-2005 V10 E350/E450 vans.
My earlier post was just asking if any in the forum have compared mileage on long trips both IN and OUT of TOW/HAUL mode for solid proof one way or the other. Ford may have had delivery trucks running around in town in mind when they designed the TOW/HAUL mode, but for a continually heavy loaded RV under a variety of driving conditions and speeds, the TOW/HAUL mode may provide some surprising slight upside in mileage due to less overall torque conversions taking place.
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pnichols
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02/10/12 12:28am |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: Parallelax 7155 - Can It Be Used with Honda eu1000i?
It will not charge a battery at 55A though.
Probably true most of the time for most wet cell RV batteries not in summer temperatures.
However, a 55% discharged AGM battery sitting in 80 degree summer heat will probably take 55 amps for an initial few minutes from a nominal 13.8 volt 55 amp converter if the wiring from the converter to the battery isn't too small.
Remember the higher the temperature that a battery (AGM or wet cell) is in, the lower a charging voltage can be to still serve as a "boost" voltage for the battery.
That's why our RV's 45 amp converter does so well taking care of our 200 amp hour AGM RV battery bank during the summer months.
The original poster's Honda 1000 and 55 amp converter will probably function better together in colder camping temperatures than in the summer months.
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pnichols
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02/09/12 10:59pm |
Tech Issues
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RE: Boondocking in eastern Oregon
BTW, going slow also kept the outside of our RV from getting so dusty. We like to have a rig not too camouflaged at the camp site so the jackrabbits don't accidentlly run into us. ;)
(The interior never got dusty because we maintain positive interior air pressure when traveling offroad.)
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pnichols
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02/09/12 02:21pm |
Public Lands, Boondocking and Dry Camping
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RE: Boondocking in eastern Oregon
"...because washboard can be smoothed out by simply going faster..."
Theoretically true in any wheeled vehicle.
It wasn't practically true for our 11,800 lb. small Class C on a ton-and-a-half E450 chassis (translation - very stiff in the rear) vehicle.
We couldn't get it smooth without probably ruining the interior experimenting enough to find out. We prefer slow to minimize damage if we're going to travel where SUV's, PU's, and TC's have to go fast to minimize damage.
Sure is nice once you get way out there in a Class C, though. Good A/C comfort, comfortable beds, showers, pizza from the oven if you wish, Internet, movies and/or star gazing in the evenings. Worth every jolt to get there. :)
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pnichols
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02/09/12 01:56pm |
Public Lands, Boondocking and Dry Camping
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RE: Boondocking in eastern Oregon
Are there any mosquitoes out there, or is it too dry?
There weren't any mosquitoes in August. The shallow lake outside Plush was probably over 20 miles away.
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pnichols
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02/09/12 01:42pm |
Public Lands, Boondocking and Dry Camping
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RE: Boondocking in eastern Oregon
We went into and out of Plush only from the South. All of our routes into the Sunstone and private mines area were as my road photo shows, but with obscene amounts of 7-10 MPH washboard on these graveled roads.
After we got to where we drycamped, many smaller high desert dirt roads went everywhere. These would actually have been less bone rattling (but bumpier) to travel on - in that there was very little washboarding on them.
The IDEAL SETUP back there for extensive exploring and/or rockhounding out from an RV base camp - that we have been drooling over - would have been to tow in one of these extraordinary 4X4 personal offroad vehicles:
http://www.kubota.com/product/RTV500/RTV500.aspx
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pnichols
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02/09/12 11:21am |
Public Lands, Boondocking and Dry Camping
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RE: Mobile Internet Service
30dollars a month additional on your Verizon smart phone.
But .... does the Verizon smart phone (or any smart phone) have an external antenna port so that one can use them with an RV rooftop cellular band antenna and a 12 volt cellular band amplifier to get service way out there in the really great drycamping camp spots?
I've found that the "external antenna" option on mobile devices is unfortunately becoming very rare. We only use mobile devices with this port so that they can also be of maximum usability on RV trips. We don't like to be limited when RV drycamping from both a safety-communication viewpoint and from an Internet-access route planning viewpoint.
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pnichols
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02/09/12 11:05am |
RV Lifestyle
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RE: The one specific suggestion you would make to RV makers...
IMHO, the grey tank should be twice as big as the black.
I used to think thay way too, but have changed my thinking as follows: IMHO, you want the tank that is the most disagreeable to deal with to be the one that you have to empty the least often. Hence it's actually best that the black tank be as large as possible, which may make the black tank the larger of the two. Grey water can always be off-loaded into the black tank as, and if, it fills ahead of the black tank.
(We do the above off-loading every once in awhile when drycamping in our small Class C MH -> our grey tank is about 30 gallons and our black tank is about 40 gallons.)
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pnichols
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02/09/12 10:51am |
General RVing Issues
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RE: Boondocking in eastern Oregon
It took some doing, but here's a recreation of the route I took from Plush to Dust Devil and back to Hwy 395.
We studied the Garmin and paper maps first and decided not to approach from the North like your Google Maps route shows you did. We came in from the South, after going around the South End of Lake Abert.
Looks awesome. Are there other sites like that or is that the only one? And how would it be for a TT with shocks. I wouldn't want to beat it up. Obviously the TT would be covered with dust from following the truck. I can imagine the sky at night must be overwhelming.
Yes ... we saw a few more sites like that, but they were isolated very far apart from each other and off on just plain desert dirt roads with no gravel. In dry weather any RV could make it in there on the route/road(s) we used. The key is to DRIVE SLOW and, if in warm weather, close up everything in the TT tow vehicle and keep the A/C on "air re-circulation mode" in the tow vehicle. It will take some patience, but it can be done. The night sky was phenomenal. :C
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pnichols
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02/09/12 10:37am |
Public Lands, Boondocking and Dry Camping
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RE: Coach batteries and alternators
'
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pnichols
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02/08/12 10:57pm |
Tech Issues
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RE: Basic GPS Wanted
We use a Garmin Nuvi 755T with lifetime updates ... which we paid for. Some Garmin models come with free lifetime updates, but ours didn't. Our 755T has enough memory to at least hold Garmin's map for all of North America. In addition, we have a lot of custom POI files in our Garmin, so with these we probably have in it's memory about every known campground in the U.S..
We have had to learn how to wisely use our Garmin, as some second-guessing and supplementing with good maps (i.e. Benchmark maps) is needed - but these two tools, in combination, are very powerful. We also have long-range cell tower broadband Internet access in our RV as a 3rd source of mapping and location information.
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pnichols
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02/08/12 10:44pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: Boondocking in eastern Oregon
They must have regraveled that road, there was little gravel and what was there was beaten into the alkali soil back when I went through there in 2009, I wound up creeping along in 4 lo to get back out to Hwy 395 over by Abert Lake for part of the run.
Did you find yourself a "watermelon"? Those are the more rare Red Sun Stones. The white sunstones are a dime a dozen, good if you tumble them for making bracelets but not much market value in them otherwise.
We were there in August of 2010. No 4 LOW required, but plenty of 8-10 MPH to keep from rattling everything out of the cupboards!
We found some watermelon, but it was our first time looking for Sunstone so we were very happy to find plenty of white and yellow. We collect for personal use only, so market values are not a consideration.
P.S. We had a great sandwich in that little restaurant in Plush. That little green valley and lake that Plush is close to is real eye candy way out there in the outback. We hope to get back there for more exploring:
http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd1/tpgnsc/IMG_7400.jpg height=480 width=640
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pnichols
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02/08/12 10:32pm |
Public Lands, Boondocking and Dry Camping
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RE: 15 + mpg with V10 in 29 footer?
Speaking of V10 Class C gas mileage ... here's an interesting angle I'd REALLY like to get to the truth on regarding gas mileage for V10 Class C motorhomes late enough to have the 5-speed transmission with TOW/HAUL mode:
For "V10 motorhome travel under average contitions" (whatever that is), in which mode does one get the best mileage - TOW/HAUL mode, or standard mode? :@
I'll guesstimate that it might be with TOW/HAUL mode always engaged because a Class C motorhome is always hauling around quite a load ... unlike delivery trucks which oftimes are empty or nearly empty. When hauling, the transmission's torque converter is slipping less during acceleration in TOW/HAUL mode so overall average efficiency should be higher.
I'm considering leaving the transmission always in TOW/HAUL mode when traveling to perhaps get slightly improved gas mileage.
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pnichols
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02/08/12 10:08pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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RE: Boondocking in eastern Oregon
Eastern Oregon is just chock-a-block full off good places to explore and for the most part, few RV'ers. It's not 'exciting' enough.
Well, not exciting enough in the August heat like when we were there North of Plush ... but that's why we paid the "big bucks" - to get a self contained Class C with decent air conditioning and a fairly well installed Onan.
We've found that coming back to a hot rig after summer outback exploring is no problem with both the cab A/C and coach A/C running for a few minutes to bring the coach temp down in a hurry. We can also can sit right in front of one of those amazing portable Fan-Tastic 12V fans set on HIGH if we have to.
Snow will keep us home - but not the heat. It seems as if very few RV'ers will tolerate heat, so summer is the time to have a lot of beautiful and serene places to yourselves.
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pnichols
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02/08/12 06:49pm |
Public Lands, Boondocking and Dry Camping
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RE: The one specific suggestion you would make to RV makers...
For most B and some C makers, refuse to put cheesy cheap noisy battery-hog appliances like the little Suburban furnace in these sometimes-over-$100K-list 'campers'.
X10. (See my list earlier on this topic regarding RV furnace options being made available at purchase time.)
C makers, learn to install a dam' Onan generator properly. By properly, I mean with enough sound and vibration isolation & insulation that we don't have to be ashamed of running it in public.
X10. (Winnie did a fairly decent job with mine, but could be better.)
mount ... your ... reefers on gimbals
X10. I'd pay $500 more for my MH to have the reefer on gimbals ... doesn't have to be gimbals that fully compensate for all angles ... just gimbals that keep the reefer more level under worst case non-level parking situations ... so that the reefer cabinet doesn't have to be too much larger. ( ... or better still ... have just the critical reefer guts on a gimbal - not the whole reefer)
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pnichols
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02/08/12 06:34pm |
General RVing Issues
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RE: Coach batteries and alternators
Don,
Don't be too scared off by the negative "single large alternator" talk. The big three have been for years offering a double alternator option to get plenty of 12V power for use in their diesel pickups or gas pickups. Normal belts are used and it's not rocket science - you could just do the this. I thought about it for my GMC pickup before I decided to just change it's stock alternator for a heavy duty 150 amp one years ago.
BTW, I see you're from MI. We were there in August. Visited Otsego, Allegan, Kalamazoo, Gun Lake, South Haven, etc..
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pnichols
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02/08/12 08:50am |
Tech Issues
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RE: Single Ladies RVing!! Good story and video
A thug messes with them at his own peril.
There's a whole world of very dangerous difference between a thug and a psychopath.
I guess I've watched too many episodes of Criminal Minds ... scarry ... even for a 6'2" 220 lb. guy like myself. I can't imagine ever exposing my beloved DW, by herself, to a world assuming that these kind of people would never enter her corner of it. Perhaps psychopaths don't really exist except on TV and it should be of no concern?
P.S. How about the real life guy who recently (and most likely) killed his wife, and then proceeded to burn himself and his two little sons to death after first trying to unsuccesfully hack their heads off so they wouldn't feel the pain from the fire?
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pnichols
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02/07/12 11:32pm |
RV Lifestyle
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RE: What are your favorite RV activities??
When camping in our RV we like to read or watch movies in the evening. We've done the sitting around the campfire thing for many years and decided it's now usually too much work - especially putting out the fire 11 or 12 at night when we're tired.
During the day, we like exploring (driving) back roads in the RV or walking/hiking not too far away from the RV looking for rocks or birds or fish ... to collect or photograph or catch.
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pnichols
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02/07/12 11:10pm |
RV Lifestyle
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RE: How many miles would you travel in 1 day?
Last summer we did 650-700 miles a day for two or three different days in a small Class C motorhome.
We could not have done that in a towable RV, however.
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pnichols
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02/07/12 11:01pm |
RV Lifestyle
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RE: 15 + mpg with V10 in 29 footer?
Try that calculation using CANADIAN gallons...20% better mileage.
Canadians can only get away with that mathematical deception because this whole topic thread is addressing the issue from the wrong angle.
What we should be talking about is V10 miles-per-fuel-dollar ... not V10 miles-per-fuel-gallon. :B
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pnichols
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02/07/12 10:56pm |
Class C Motorhomes
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