6.4 Hemi actual Towing mpg

[aceinspp]

Originally Posted by elchilero53

Sounds to me like you did pretty well pulling into a headwind going west. All tow vehicles have a sweet spot where optimum towing mpg is concerned. For most it lies between 55 and 65 mpg for gasoline engines. Diesels are a different animal and do much better in headwinds.

My 6.2L has a 63 mph sweet spot and gets 11 - 15 mpg - that is unless I am towing into a stiff headwind like you were then it goes down accordingly. At that point, I slow down to 55 to 60 mph and leave the cruise control off. I don't get there quite as fast but there isn't a really loud sucking noise coming from my fuel system, either!


Something else you might consider to get better mileage: go up one gasoline grade if you are using regular. Of course, if you are using Premium I suppose you could move up to racing fuel (100 Octane).

You down on weight and length compared to others here. I could easily increase mileage towing a 25 ft tt. Later RJD

[Trawlerphil]

We're 7,600 miles in to our "West Coast Walk-About" and the mileage on our Tundra towing 9,000 lbs with a 4:30 rear end is 9.95. I drive 55-65 and paddle shift through mountains.

[DouglasReid]

Originally Posted by Mikolow

Thank you guys for all the upbeat news. I pull a 13k fifth wheel and average 12-12.5 mpg but that's with a diesel. Glad to hear we are all in the same fuel mileage neighborhood and i hope we all "don't care" and just enjoy the camping and travel.

The Maxxis 8008 tires we have on our camper are speed limited to 65 MPH. I find if I drop my speed to 62 (a 5% decrease) I gain a 10% increase in mileage.

[DouglasReid]

Originally Posted by Awilson

I tend to agree with you because, as the OP stated, the instant MPG drops to 2nwhen it drops down in gears trying to maintain 65. When you can feather the throttle to accommodate the hills your MPG will not suffer as much. It still takes more power to pull the hills but you can control the throttle better than a cruise control that is programmed to maintain speed. I’ve had a chance to drive my SIL’s Hemi and it does really well towing his camper. Much better than I anticipated. If you have the time to travel, those trucks, in fact all trucks, will get better mileage driving around 60 MPH. Just my 2 cents.

Alan

When pulling hills I try to maintain around 2200 RPMs, dropping my gears and speed to be able to maintain between 1800 and 2200 RPM.

My engine and transmission stay much cooler at those RPMs. Any higher I am burning more fuel which increases engine Temp and at lower RPMs I am lugging the engine, which increases engine Temp.

I use the TH mode always while pulling and the Manual Mode to adjust the gear and Cruise Control to adjust the speed to maintain those RPMs. It is MUCH easier on the entire drive train, particularly the engine, but also the transmission.

I dont have the ability to monitor the Engine Oil temps, even with the Edge CTS Insight unless I add an Engine Oil Temp Probe, which I don't find all that necessary anyway.

Im running a diesel engine so my RPMs are not what a gasser will need to pull the same hills. Mileage is about 11 on flat ground, lower in mountains of course but not much below 9.5 MPG.

The 39 gallon Aux tank gives me a total of 60 gallons and that gives me a decent range before I am hunting fuel.

[markb422]

Air resistance, be it due to headwinds or speed, increases exponentially with a increase in speed. So, the best mpg you will ever get is sitting still. I did not buy a RV to sit still. But when I am moving I try to maintain some sort of plan to get safely where I am going while not having to spend half our travel cash on fuel. That way we can go further and more often.

[Teamster4life]

Lol , tried 62 - 63 for about 20 minutes saw no difference in instant mpg so went back to 65 and still getting passed like I was setting still . I had a light 3-5 mph headwind today and averaged 9.4 mpg hand calculated truck (displayed 10.5 ). Kind of surprised by how drastically the wind speed and direction cut the mpg's . I expected 2-3 mpg loss but 4-5 just kinda surprised me . Not really concerned with the mpg's , still love my truck just putting these numbers out there for people wanting to know what to expect driving their truck normal with cruise control set not trying to squeeze out maximum mpg's . I bought this truck to tow my travel trailer with and it does that well . It just drinks a little more than I expected .

[lengercce]

Get average of 15 to18 mpg towing our 2016 VLITE with 2014 RAM hemi @ 55 mph.
VLITE is for sale on RVTRADER.COM. We love it but due to health problems must sell.
Please see it at RVTRADER.COM, it is a VLITE model 30WRLIKS.

[DouglasReid]

Originally Posted by Teamster4life

Lol , tried 62 - 63 for about 20 minutes saw no difference in instant mpg so went back to 65 and still getting passed like I was setting still.

We dont mind getting passed up by everyone else. It actually makes for a very relaxing drive, not having to worry about braking very often and just tooling along, easy peasy.

We arrive 10 minutes later because of 62 instead of 65, doesn't matter.

[cduemmel]

We just did our first trip this past weekend, going from Greensboro to Asheville NC. I'm not at all experienced in towing or management, so all the tips I'm seeing here is pretty much what we did. Got around 9.4-9.6 MPG going over (mainly uphill) and 9.0-10 coming back. CC did most of the work, but pulling the 6 miles up 6% grade in the Pisgah National Forest was not fun. Temperature really climbed up and we were rolling up about 35-40. Any tips on how to handle that?

Setup is as below. Truck has the 4.7L V8

[aceinspp]

Originally Posted by DouglasReid

We dont mind getting passed up by everyone else. It actually makes for a very relaxing drive, not having to worry about braking very often and just tooling along, easy peasy.

We arrive 10 minutes later because of 62 instead of 65, doesn't matter.

X 2 not much difference in arrival times and yep let em all pass that way I can keep steady speed and Yardley ever need to pass anyone. OLater RJD

[aceinspp]

Originally Posted by lengercce

Get average of 15 to18 mpg towing our 2016 VLITE with 2014 RAM hemi @ 55 mph.
VLITE is for sale on RVTRADER.COM. We love it but due to health problems must sell.
Please see it at RVTRADER.COM, it is a VLITE model 30WRLIKS.

I find that a little hard to believe towing. I have the same tt and it weighs about 9000#. You must not tow far. Later RJD

[tcorl]

We have a 2015 6.4 Hemi 4.10 rear end. We have a 2017 Coachman Chaparral 37 ft. 10,500 to 12,500 lbs. . We tow at 55 to 60 mph no cruise control we average 11.3 mpg. We do have tire monitors on. I would hate to see the damages a tire blow out traveling 70 mph. I think running higher speed does reduce your mpg. Most trailer tires are no rated to run higher speeds. My tires are speed rated to run higher but I stay around 55-60 mph.

[aceinspp]

Originally Posted by tcorl

We have a 2015 6.4 Hemi 4.10 rear end. We have a 2017 Coachman Chaparral 37 ft. 10,500 to 12,500 lbs. . We tow at 55 to 60 mph no cruise control we average 11.3 mpg. We do have tire monitors on. I would hate to see the damages a tire blow out traveling 70 mph. I think running higher speed does reduce your mpg. Most trailer tires are no rated to run higher speeds. My tires are speed rated to run higher but I stay around 55-60 mph.

Do you use 87 octane or higher? Sounds like the more miles you get on the truck the better the mileage becomes. I know the first towing I did with TH mileage was not very good around 8mpg but only had 450 miles on the truck and towed just 50 miles to Helen. Return trip got better not using TH. My speed was 55 to 60. My Chevy 2500 was bad on fuel also using TH. I now pick and choose when to use as I did with the Chevy and mileage is a lot better. Later RJD

[tcorl]

Our dealer told us to use regular gas. That's what we use.

[tcorl]

We also have a 4.10 rear end in this truck.

[Gsykora]

We took a 6400 mile trip from Dallas up through Rushmore, Canada, Glacier NP, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, back down through Park City and then across through Albuquerque back down to Dallas. We pulled a 40ft CC 36CK2. Trailer is around 13,000lbs. My sweet spot on flatlands was 68mph and between Dallas to Rushmore, there is a lot of flatland. 80MPH hwy through S. Dakota, so you get passed by everyone - not a big deal. Lots of mountains to climb and descent through Glacier and Yellowstone, Idaho and Utah. Here's a screen shot of the accumulated mileage from the truck. Point to point mileage was 4500, so we ended up adding another 2000 miles of site seeing (no trailer).

[windsurfdog]

Originally Posted by DouglasReid

We dont mind getting passed up by everyone else. It actually makes for a very relaxing drive, not having to worry about braking very often and just tooling along, easy peasy.

We arrive 10 minutes later because of 62 instead of 65, doesn't matter.

^^^Exactly^^^

...though I do travel at 65 when on interstate instead of 75-85 like everyone else

And the rightmost lane is my friend...

[aceinspp]

Originally Posted by Gsykora

We took a 6400 mile trip from Dallas up through Rushmore, Canada, Glacier NP, Yellowstone, Grand Tetons, back down through Park City and then across through Albuquerque back down to Dallas. We pulled a 40ft CC 36CK2. Trailer is around 13,000lbs. My sweet spot on flatlands was 68mph and between Dallas to Rushmore, there is a lot of flatland. 80MPH hwy through S. Dakota, so you get passed by everyone - not a big deal. Lots of mountains to climb and descent through Glacier and Yellowstone, Idaho and Utah. Here's a screen shot of the accumulated mileage from the truck. Point to point mileage was 4500, so we ended up adding another 2000 miles of site seeing (no trailer).

You will find most computer mpg is off. When not towing mpg goes up and then takes a while to recalculate when 5er hooked up. BTW not hardly a Ram 6.4

[Mountndream]

i have the 6.4 with the 3.73. Until recently I always used the tow haul mode when pulling my 9k fifth wheel. Usually I would average 10mpg on my trips including my sightseeing without my trailer attached.



coming back from Goshen last weekend, i didn't use tow haul and i noticed a considerable lower amount of RPMs and believe I was 10-11 mpg for the trip.



My tires are rated to 75 mph and I run about 72 mph.


Also, when i pulled through Wyoming, my gas mileage sucked. It seems that you are either going up or down. I am almost certain that there isn't a flat road in the state

[Gsykora]

Originally Posted by aceinspp

You will find most computer mpg is off. When not towing mpg goes up and then takes a while to recalculate when 5er hooked up. BTW not hardly a Ram 6.4

Never said it was a Ram 6.4, but since everyone else was chiming in about almost everything, I figured I would also.

Gallons used per the truck were only off by less than 10 gallons verse what I filled up with along the trip, so the 6400 miles divided by 580 gallons does equal 11mph. However, remember I said that about 2000 of those miles were without the trailer, so probably around 15mph with those miles (that's my around town average). So doing some math, that works out to 10mph for the 4400 miles towing.