Quote:
Originally Posted by 93tracerwagon
I recently purchased a full size chevy 2500 van with the 2.8 Duramax and with about 7500 lbs or more regular weight, we are getting 17 to 18 in chicago city traffic and about 25 highway with no attempts to save fuel. It has about 2500 miles on it now. New and empty we saw about 27 highway on shorter 100 mile trips. It may have gotten around 30 on the longer trip when it was delivered from out of state. IMHO turbo 6's are a stupid idea for any truck that is doing real work. Diesels are inherently efficient at extremely heavy loads.... lots and lots of torque at low rpms. The 2.8 diesel produces about 360 ftlb of torque.... the same as the 6.0l gas v-8, but at much lower rpms. I bet much better city mileage could be gotten by changing the trans programming. It holds lower gears in city traffic than are necessary, probably for improved engine braking. Overall fuel usage is about 1/2 that of the gas vans we have. The extra cost of the diesel engine is returned by 20,000 miles. The gas savings along covers about a third of the car payment.
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I didn't know they put the new diesel in the vans until you posted this. Makes me wonder why not in the 1500 full size pickups but oh well. Seems like the ultimate 12 passenger setup. I doubt anything would get better MPG per passenger. Well maybe the ecodiesel fiat promaster.