Los Angeles to Vegas=60mpg?
 

Ok, so I have a few ideas that are easy and have worked in the past for me that I thought I would do to my '82 Chevette diesel. They are:

45psi tire pressure
grille block
no wipers
windows up
Cetane Booster
50-55mph driving.

The goal is to get 60+mpg on the 300 mile drive to Vegas, which might be a challenge considering there are a few pretty large hills on that route. I'll let you guys know how it goes. So far my best has been 56.2mpg just by driving slow. I don't know when I'll try this, probably in a few weeks.

You're gaining a bit under 2000ft so 60+mpg to Vegas may be asking for a bit much. Maybe round trip you could pull it off, but then again I don't recommend going less than 60-65mph unless traffic is really light since there a long stretches of two lane freeway where semis cruise at 65+mph and autos tend to sit around 75-85+mph, not counting the speeders. The hills won't be too bad since you're at high load and near peak BTE going up 'em unless you've fiddled your smoke screw in the rich direction, and they are pretty steep so you can P&G down 'em fairly easily.

I'd love to have a circa-80's 4-banger diesel anything to play with. I was looking at 'vette diesels on ebay and they are few and far between. Almost bought a Chevy Luv 4x4 diesel pickup back in '05.

Have you thought of using B20 instead of #2 diesel? No mods needed to run B20. B20 is a little higher in cetane and will run cleaner. Sometimes you can get #1 at truck stops. These might help with the cetane and running more efficient.