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Subject:Re: 1986 Vanagon GL Auto - Mileage
From:jbange
Date:Tue, 3 May 2005 08:14:53 -0700

At 05:37 AM 5/3/2005, you wrote:
>You might bump it up a half mile per gallon more by cruising at no moe
>than 55 mph and addiing type F fluid to the trans to help the clutches
>grab better, but you'll hardly never see 16 mpg. in an automatic
>Vanagon.
>
>If someone makes ridiculous claims otherwise, they are blatantly
>pevaricating.

Call me a prevaricator, but over the course of 6 months and 2000+ miles
before I had a head stud snap, I consistently got 18-19mpg from mine (auto
transmission, over 200K miles on original engine). Flat highway driving at
55-60mph would get it to 19 and change, only ever breaking 20 if there was
a downhill slope to it. City driving brought the average down, but I never
did enough to get a good idea of what the mpg was. Mileage was recorded via
GPS, so I wasn't a victim of an over-enthusiastic odometer.  An auto westy
might never see above 16, but a GL certainly could do better than that.