Thread: drafting semi's
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Old 10-06-2012, 01:00 AM   #60 (permalink)
serialk11r
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ecomodded View Post
On the highways i find a slow traveling large truck or RV and tuck in behind them,without being a tailgater. More often then not the trucks speed starts increasing and i back off and drive my preferred gas saving 55-60 mph.
That's the preferred situation of course. I was getting almost 50mpg following this guy in a dodge truck pulling a rather large trailer thingy along the right lane at 55mph, and it was relaxed driving for me too. 50mpg is astounding for my gearing, which spins the engine at 3000rpm to go 55mph. With no cars to draft I max out at about 55mpg going ~35 mph steady state cruise (though this is going off Torque, which sometimes is giving very obviously inaccurate readouts).

Otherwise, I try to draft faster moving large vehicles for as long as possible without speeding up too much. Saving some time isn't too shabby of a proposition. Average speed of 65 drops the fuel economy to high 30s, but if I can draft at a pretty big distance even it goes up to about 40mpg.
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