Drove from Denver to Oregon Coast and some bits around Oregon during the month of February. From time to time people are curious about MPG, etc. So here are my top level (not "engineering level" or OCD-level) results from the trip.
I only took one LC "selfie" using my wife's cell phone. You can see the cargo box on top. Here are also a couple pics from along the road in Oregon. (If you are interested you can see the other landscape images I captured on the trip by going to drhphoto.smugmug.com, clicking on Browse, then the Landscape gallery and scrolling to the bottom. Primarily pics of the Oregon Coast and Arches/Moab area with snow.)
And if you are interested in the route:
- 4,003 Miles. (My LC is now over 66K after 18 months of ownership.) Nearly all highway/interstate. Average speed between speed limit and 5mph over. A lot of 55-65mph secondary highways vs 75-80 interstates highways which probably helped MPG.
- Average MPG for the whole 4,000 miles (as displayed by the trip computer on my 2016 LC) - 15.3 MPG. I don't know about earlier miles but the 2016 allows me to reset the average MPG which I did at the beginning of the trip. It separately allows me to have it automatically reset after each fill up which I did not bother with. We always filled up with whatever the mid-grade was and nearly always Shell Plus.
- Weight of LC fully loaded for this trip - 7,000 lbs. (This includes all our gear and my wife and I).
- LC Setup: 2016 LC w/ Slee sliders, Gobi rack/ladder, ARB drawers (no 3rd row). 285/60R18 Hakka R2 snow tires (vs my usual 285/65R18E KO2s). Yakima cargo box (long and narrow version with golf clubs, winter emergency gear and snow shoes), Maxtrax and shovel on the roof rack.
- Cargo box on roof was noisy on the interstates, otherwise we didn't notice it. But my truck is noticeably noisier at 75-80 mph.
- Lots of snow driving (including a snow storm with packed snow and ice over Monarch Pass in CO having just been told by a state patrolman not to attempt it as they had just had 2 accidents and another snow storm coming down Soldier Pass into Provo at night, through the Oregon Cascades with ice and snowpack and on the way home some off pavement driving in snow/mud around Moab). Hakka's did awesome.
- Dynamic Cruise Control was awesome on this trip. My right led could not have handled the long hours without it. I got so accustomed to how it worked that, given the long stretches of freeway, I could go for an hour without using my feet.
I only took one LC "selfie" using my wife's cell phone. You can see the cargo box on top. Here are also a couple pics from along the road in Oregon. (If you are interested you can see the other landscape images I captured on the trip by going to drhphoto.smugmug.com, clicking on Browse, then the Landscape gallery and scrolling to the bottom. Primarily pics of the Oregon Coast and Arches/Moab area with snow.)
And if you are interested in the route:
- For the trip out we had to avoid a closure on I-70 in Glenwood Canyon due to a rock fall so we went southwest from Denver along Highway 285 then picked up US-50 over Monarch Pass and eventually to Grand Junction. From there we took I-70 to Green River, UT then Highway 6 over the Wasatch Mountains via Soldier Pass into Provo and then north to Odgen, UT. That was day one. The next day we drove to Bend, OR along Interstate 84 to Ontario, OR then Highway 20 across to Bend.
- For the return trip we took a more southerly route from Bend using Highway 78 from Burns to Highway 95 past the Steens Mountains (second picture) to Winnemucca, UT and across to SLC then over to Moab.
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