y2k Dak Quad Trip Report

From: Curt Coulter (curt@cjnetworking.com)
Date: Tue Feb 22 2000 - 01:49:23 EST


Hi all,

Well, I towed with my new Dak for the first time over the weekend. Started
at 389 on the odometer and did 593 miles towing 1800 pounds of
snowmobiles/trailer and about 200 pounds of gear in the bed under the
tonneau (Chelsea, MI <--> Indian River, MI).

Average fuel mileage for the trip was 10.8 mpg at 70-74 mph mostly. (4.7,
4x4, 5spd, 3.92). I'm slightly disappointed with that figure, hopefully it
will go up a bit as the motor breaks in more. According the the computer
MPG (which is spot on for me at this point) the mpg wasn't really changing
much when I slowed it down to 60 it went up 1 mpg.

Truck handled awesome, towed like nothing was back there, except on some of
the bigger hills. I had to downshift to 4th about 3-4 times each way. It
could use a little more grunt in the 2400-2600 rpm range in 5th. I'm
thinking of putting in a quickd intake and a gibson cat-back to help with
that (as well as the mileage a little). Really can't complain at all
though, once into 4th it pulled like a freight train as fast as I wanted to
take it. BTW, speed limit here is 70 mph so the downshifting was to
maintain 74mph. All in all though it pulled WAY better than the F150 4x4
5.0l it replaced, and did it in comfort and style. One problem I
encountered on the highway were people lingering on my left side checking
out the truck. Lots of interest in the truck when we were unloading/loading
the sleds too, which was a lot cooler than the guys gawking at 70 swerving
around. :-)

-Curt
curt@cjnetworking.com
http://home.earthlink.net/~coulterc/dakota/Dakota.html



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