Well I have no idea of whether I'm overly pleased with it or not. However it's always got us home so that's a big plus.
2nd year out a blown spark plug, lost a lot of confidence after that. In defense of the V10, it was on a Sunday a very long way from any sort of a dealership, but it chugged noisily along from St Thomas ON to Welland ON. Other than the noise there was lots of power left and even at that, the only time it rocked a bit was on big hills. Locking it out of Overdrive on hills solved that inconvenience. After a Ford approved repair($500) we spent another $450 on maintenance as insurance for the homeward bound trip. The homeward trip was uneventful other than waiting for the other shoe to drop.
The next year it pretty much sat in the driveway from the lack of trust. During the winter that year my granddaughter moved to Calgary AB and DW promised her we would visit, so in the Spring preparations were started, I knew there were brake problems so off to the Kenworth dealer it went. Two front calipers were seized, the short of it is a $1200 cost for shocks and brakes (not to mention mods required on the coach). This time I checked the plugs for proper torque. The short story is for the 8000 miles it ran fine excepting that the brake and ABS warning lights coming on and staying on within the last 150 miles.
With regard to the V10, climbing the roads at Banff and Jasper it wasn't much if any different than driving on a flat surface, no high revs and in overdrive most of the time. Coming back down the brakes got a little stinky.
This is the mileage calculated on the second trip, it also confirms our calculations for the first trip
3107 miles 876.6Lt. = 3.54437 miles/liter =
17.5312169 liters/100 km
Miles per Gal US 3.54437 miles/liter =
13.4169miles per US Gal
Most of our driving is on the highway and at 55mph. The rig is a bit over 5 ton gross weight and only 23.5 ft bumper to bumper. It now has 120000 miles on the clock, will we keep it? you can bet we will, hopefully I'll have the light problem figured out tomorrow and repaired shortly after. There's a few more modifications to do before it's really our home away from home.
Maybe I should start a Blog
I guess I should mention the drag race it won against a V6 (Ranger. Toyota) or whatever, it was a blast and from DW's description of the look on the drivers face as we passed him it was well worth the short run to do it
Cheers
Willey