RV FEATURE
Marty has fitted slightly larger
tyres to his Cruiser, which has
increased his fuel usage.
“WEIGHT WISE, OUR RIG IS
PRETTY MUCH MAXED OUT.”
wise, its pretty much maxed out. The van weighs
3.5-tonne fully loaded, with all water tanks also
full. As far as fuel economy is concerned, we are
probably close to the worst possible starting point.
We’ve also made a few modifications to our rig
that also adds to our fuel use. We fitted slightly
larger all terrain tyres, which are heavier than
the OEM tyres and they have made our overall
gearing slightly taller. That change alone probably
added around 2L/100km to our average fuel
use. To try to counteract that, we fitted a larger
exhaust system but, in reality, that made very
little difference.
The caravan is heavy. We’ve been to some
remote areas on our travels including Cape York,
The Plenty Highway, the Great Central Road and
the Oodnadatta Track. We are self-sufficient,
with 300L of water available, large battery and
solar power, a reasonable supply of spare parts
and recovery gear plus all our food, clothing and
life accessories. We don’t really want for anything,
but that adds weight and that means using
more fuel.
When we started our trip, we tracked our
fuel economy using a variety of methods. We
have a Scan Gauge fitted to the Cruiser, which
measures fuel use by recording each fuel fill-up
and the cost per litre. We quickly dropped this as
it became tedious and largely inaccurate. This is
not necessarily a failing of the Scan Gauge itself
but rather a symptom of the variability of our
fuel use. More on that later.
We also used the Cruiser’s trip computer to
monitor fuel use, particularly its ability to calculate
/ 37