Initial impressions of the drive!

We are back in town!  Actually we were back August 28th but have been so busy moving out of the apartment, finding a place to stay near town, and just getting settled a bit!

More to come on some of that experience but here is a copy of the post I did for the IRV2 community about our driving experience coming home.  This community (and others) have been so awesome for us so we wanted to give back in case it helps others with their decisions along the way!

At our dear friends in Michigan, getting ready to hit the road!

We picked up our new home in Grand Rapids MI on August 15 and had planned to leisurely travel back to WA state returning over Labor Day weekend.  We left our pup (ok, she's 16) with my sister and she called to say Bonnie wasn't doing well so we accelerated our plans and returned a week early.  We spent the last week of August through Labor Day weekend getting her checked out at the vet (cancer :( ) and moving out of the apartment and into the motorhome (with leftovers to sort still in our van!).  Now that we are out, I have a little bit of time to recap the driving portion of our trip.

For some background, we have never driven a diesel (other than test drives) and our most recent experience was our 1987 Pace Arrow 27' which we owned for about 12 years (it had a Chevy 454).  We have also test driven several Ford V10's with the 5 speed transmission and thought it was about the same (or worse) than our Chevy 454 as far as noise going uphill.  Our Bay Star 3009 is a 31' Ford V10 with the 6 speed transmission on a 22k chassis.  We have not purchased a tow car yet so this trip was without a car.

Overall we are thrilled with the quality of the ride and drive.  Very comfortable both in seating and driving position as well as the overall feel.  The slide behind us was no issue (I am 5'7" but have really long legs and my husband is almost 6').   It has a solid feel, no wandering, no porpoising or swaying.  Feels great to drive.  The noise in the coach was generally really quiet (no rattles or wind noise).  We do have an issue with one of the slide locks making noise so we wrapped a rag around it. 

The 6 speed compared to the 5 speed is so much better with smoother shifting and doesn't jump to high RPM's on the least little hill.  I found that if I set cruise control on 60ish, it will shift to 4500 RPM's to maintain that speed (going uphill).  I prefer to take off the cruise control on hills and keep it at 50-55 and it will typically shift to 3300 RPM's at that speed which is more comfortable.  We were used to the noise going up hills so that's never bothered us but either this engine or Newmar's sound proofing (or both) is much better than our Pace because it was quite comfortable carrying on a conversation going up hills even at the 4500 RPM's.

Frustratingly, we've experienced having to turn around in tight places despite our efforts to check with Google earth view (a street was closed with no warning until after you turned the corner and no way out).  We also ended up going down a washboard gravel road (a spur of the moment decision off the interstate as we needed a break after driving quite awhile).  The turning radius seemed "normal" to us which means it was good (but still a motorhome so not often being able to do a U-turn!).  Washboarding was no fun.  We really like the short coach for turning around in tight places!

We didn't feel trucks passing us going the same direction nor trucks passing coming toward us so we were pleased with that.  EXCEPT when it was windy where they would block the wind briefly and we'd get slammed after they passed!

Speaking of wind, that's the only issue we had during the drive.  We weren't buffeted about in 15 mph winds but constant attention and correction were required to hold her steady.  In winds of 25 mph, we started to feel the effects in pushing us around.  I hear that in a 40' DP (with comfort drive?), you can drive in that wind with 1 finger.   I think we would choose to forgo driving that day (if we had the choice) if the winds approached 25 mph.  Or not.  It wasn't bad, just not relaxing for sure!

We were pleasantly surprised that our average gas mileage was around 8 mpg with multiple driving conditions (not towing yet) and speed generally around 60 on the highway.  We got as high as 9.3  mpg and as low as 7.2.  We couldn't tell why (we got over 8 in the mountains and the 7.2 was before the mountains.  Maybe a headwind we didn't notice?).   We did run the generator for short bursts of time.

Tow haul mode worked as expected.  We tried engaging it prior to driving down the mountain and it did well (shifting down if we depressed the brake harder).  We also tried setting cruise control for 50 or 55 and when it approached 55 or 60, it would downshift to bring us back.  I found tow haul easier to use because when I knew we were through the downgrade, I could just turn it off and it would drop to a normal gear whereas with the other method it tended to stay in a lower gear until I gave it gas (but I didn't want to give it gas, I just wanted it to shift to a higher gear and let it coast faster the rest of the way down). 

At any rate, we are very pleased with the 6 speed transmission and the feel of the drive.  Which leaves us in a happy place of wondering whether we even need all the enhancements others have added (5 star tune, CHF, steering control, sumo's etc.).   I assume the best approach is to get more miles under our belt and if there is an issue we don't like then research what might fix that.

One last thing, we were disappointed that there is very little feedback on mpg as you're driving (it has miles to go before empty but not current mpg).  We also like knowing more about what's going on under the hood so we do think we'd like to get an OBD plugin to monitor things.  

Which reminds me, we did "test" how many gallons are left when you reach the red on the gas gauge.  For us, for the one and only time we hope to test it, we had 12 gallons left of the 80 gallons and it had just reached the red zone.  The gauge said we had 54 miles to go when we pulled over which calculates to about 4.5 mpg (we think).  I think it got more conservative as we got closer to empty (starting out giving us lots of miles at around 7 mpg on a full tank but dropping to the 54 predicting 4.5 mpg!).   Not sure how that's supposed to work but we wanted to know how much to trust the predicted miles left.  We would test it at various points (if we had a half tank left, we should be able to go 280 miles (40 gals x 7 mpg) which we compared to it's estimate which was close until we reached closer to empty where it started dropping the estimated miles more rapidly.

Well, if you've read this far, you are definitely interested!  Hope this was helpful to folks (I know we enjoyed reading trip reports!).  Next chapter will be on our weights before and after loading!

Ellen and Pat

PS  Forgot to mention an odd noise that would appear around the dog house when going uphill in a lower gear.  Kind of a rattle or knocking on the passenger side of the dog house.  My husband (I generally drive - he likes to read or sleep!) would put his foot against the dog house and it would stop the noise.   If anyone has ideas on this, we're open to hearing them!