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Cross Country Trip...


Guest wemit

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Just completed a cross country trip from Western Montana to South Bend Indiana and back. I found that driving my '85 Toyota motorhome with the four cylinder to be tiring as Hell! I had to constantly be aware of hills and the attendant "parade" behind me for most of the trip. The engine performed well with no issues other than some oil leakage. I did get fairly good gas mileage with a little over 15 mpg average for the 3600 miles driving about 60 mph. Some of the fill-ups showed over 17 mpg and one time after about four hours of a good tail wind, I got just over 20 mpg! We had headwinds in South Dakota of about 25 mph which really slowed us down  resulting in a four hour run of about 10 mpg. The headwinds also actually ripped my awning off the side of the rv and broke it into many pieces all over the road. I went back but there was no way to retrieve the parts or do anything with them so I left it there. Also we had a stone jump up and crack the windshield and the muffler split open but the rig was still driveable although a bit louder.

Also some advice: don't do the trip in August without cab air conditioning!

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Sounds like a challenging trip! Thanks for posting some real world experience... folks that are hovering on the fringes, just checking things out, need to be aware these old, underpowered rigs aren’t exactly a bed of roses all the time. :)

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11 hours ago, wemit said:

Just completed a cross country trip from Western Montana to South Bend Indiana and back. I found that driving my '85 Toyota motorhome with the four cylinder to be tiring as Hell! I had to constantly be aware of hills and the attendant "parade" behind me for most of the trip. The engine performed well with no issues other than some oil leakage. I did get fairly good gas mileage with a little over 15 mpg average for the 3600 miles driving about 60 mph. Some of the fill-ups showed over 17 mpg and one time after about four hours of a good tail wind, I got just over 20 mpg! We had headwinds in South Dakota of about 25 mph which really slowed us down  resulting in a four hour run of about 10 mpg. The headwinds also actually ripped my awning off the side of the rv and broke it into many pieces all over the road. I went back but there was no way to retrieve the parts or do anything with them so I left it there. Also we had a stone jump up and crack the windshield and the muffler split open but the rig was still driveable although a bit louder.

Also some advice: don't do the trip in August without cab air conditioning!

Great experience, thanks for sharing! 

My experience is similar, with my '90 Dolphin V6.  Drove this: San Francisco - Sequoia Nat'l Park - Las Vegas - Zion Nat'l Park - Denver - Casper, WY - Yellowstone Nat'l Park - Salt Lake City.  Took about 3 weeks because of all the stops and camping.  Drove on interstates, primarily and stayed around 60-65 MPH (didn't have a parade behind me but everyone passed me, speed limit in these states is 80 MPH!), but it was a very relaxed drive because I didn't care who was behind me.  I could have pushed the RV faster but didn't want to.  Averaged 16.5 MPG (and I have the log and receipts to prove it), even climbing the Rockies.  It was EXTREMELY windy (headwind) in Idaho, lost a solar panel - I only realized it at the next stop, so I couldn't check to see where it fell off.  No oil consumption at all.  Only ran the cab AC while driving around town, but it was peerless! On the freeway I had "2-50 AC" (2 open windows, 50 MPH) but hardly needed to.

Next trip will be: Salt Lake City - Boise - Portland - Seattle but with many stays in the national forests in between, 2 weeks.

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  • 6 months later...

You guys must be in a hurry taking interstates on a Toyota camping trip. I'd never get on the interstate in a yota home unless I had no other choice!  Take the back roads, slow down, and have a safe place to pull on the side of the road when stuff breaks! The back roads are the good scenery anyways. 

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