Going 80-85 in South Dakota last year hour after hour
flat out I got 19 mpg. This is from an inline four
engine with 160,000 miles on it.
It did go down in a serious headwind later, and on
hills downshifting. Out west there are a lot of
mountains and hills that cut down your mileage.\

Mileage might be up since installing the five-speed
transmission.

Robert

1982 Westfalia

--- George Goff <THX0001@AOL.COM> wrote:
> In a message dated 3/11/05 1:52:48 AM,
> marcsayer@COMCAST.NET writes:
>
> << The E150 is very lush and nice, has about the
> same useful room as the
> Vngn, gets 12 13 MPG on the highway and has been
> mostly trouble free. >>
>
> Perhaps there has been a quantum leap in van design
> recently.  This past
> summer I put about 1400 miles through the Northeast
> in a rental Chebbie cargo van.
>  I think it was a 2500 series and I think it had a
> V-6.  It was whatever
> cargo van Enterprise rents.  It ran like a dream,
> damn near froze me out of the
> thing and returned over 20 MPG.  To be fair, this
> was mostly highway miles.  It
> was loaded to the gills one way and empty on the
> return.  The amount of load
> hardly effected the MPG.  I kept up with traffic
> which, especially through
> Connecticut, New Yawk, and Mass meant running at
> least 80 or getting run over.  A
> few times I took a blast over a 100 and it felt not
> much different from going
> 60.
>
> I stopped for gas as I neared home and a tradesman
> in a similar van pulled in
> next to me.  Since I had fully expected to get about
> 10 MPG from the thing
> and thinking that perhaps I erred in my record
> keeping, I asked him what kind of
> MPG his van got on the highway.  He said,"Oh, about
> 20 or a little better . .
> . but this van has a V-8."
>
> I can't help but wonder what kind of MPG I would
> have gotten had I been able
> to hold my speed to 70 Mph some Vanagon owners use
> as their upper limit.
>
> One thing I did particularly like was to able to
> pass a semi at 90 without
> the feeling that it was the last time I would ever
> see this sweet earth.  On the
> other hand, I didn't really like the pattern of the
> seat fabric.
>
> The trip was not exactly trouble-free.  While
> parking I shifted a wheel
> weight whenever I brushed a curb (damn those granite
> curbstones in New Hampshire!).
>  Fortunately, I could see the outline of the
> weight's original location, but
> I did have to spend 5 minutes tapping it back into
> place.  You see, no vehicle
> is without its problems.
>
> George
>

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