Good morning folks,
We towed the race car, on an open trailer from NY state to West Virginia. The trailer and car weighed about 4000lbs. I have an uploaded tune from 5 star, track bar and safe t steer installed. The trip was about 360 miles. For the trip down we took I81 south all the way from the intersection of I84. It was a very hilly route and slowed us down considerably. At first I had it in tow mode. But it seemed to downshift far too often raving the motor and damn near making me deaf. I quickly switched it back to normal mode. I wear hearing aids too, which made it worse, so YMMV. Nonetheless she made it through all the hills of the Poconos. Even with the safe t steer and track bar, I had today attention to the pitch of the road. Like all fords, it wanted to wander a little, but it was not all that difficult to keep in my lane. I just needed to be alert
The seat is pretty comfy. It was hot, 95 degrees. The AC struggled to keep us cool. We were not sweating, but it was warm..... I need to design some sort of curtain barrier to hang behind the seats so the hot air from the coach doesn't invade the drivers compartment. we got 5.6 MPG
For the trip home we came back rt 78, a much flatter route skirting the mountains. To keep us cool I started the get and ran the AC in zone one. It made a difference. I don't know how it affected MPG yet as I haven't filled it up, but I am certain We did better. The trip down took 7 hours, the trip home 6, on the button. I was able to maintain 65mph pretty consistently. I noticed too, at the higher speeds the coach wandered less. Has anyone else observed that?
In the future we plan to travel out west a lot.. I'm not convinced this is the right coach for that job, especially towing in the mountains. That said, I was pretty impressed with how she handled the trip. Newmar quality is second to none, IMO and this coach is perfect for us, at least for now...I do see a dutch star in my future
YMMV