The research was needed by the whole world. We NEEDED to know. So I did it, with the Mirage. I towed a tankful. It was absolutely NO BIG DEAL.
Here's my official mpg procedure. Where the speed limit is 70 mph, I do 72 mph. It is my personal "official" mpg rating speed. Where the speed limit is 65 mph, I do 65 mph. All GPS confirmed. It's just my official technique. Maybe 40 of the 145 mile leg is at 65 mph. And the 65 mph speeds are on I-285 and I-75 just north of the I-285 loop. Contrary to most people's claim that you must do 85+ mph to remain alive, I never have issues with these speeds. I stay to the right mostly, and change lanes only to avoid slower traffic and rarely need to cancel my cruise control. I do get the occasional, if not frequent at times hooptie flyby. But you get that regardless of what speed you drive. There is a certain element around Atlanta that seem to feel the I-285 loop is their personal racetrack. You take your chances regardless of your equipment. Most of these flyby drivers seem to have decent reflexes but the stink of it is, with traffic enforcement that gave a (you know what) this could be much better controlled. Whatever...
Results: I seemed to get about 36 mpg going north and 33 mpg going south. I always seem to get a bit better mpg going north. It must be wind influenced. Plus the pressure washer had some amount of wind drag too, that effected the south number. In the end my mpg was 34.5 mpg average. I went up Saturday late afternoon / evening. And came back Sunday morning / early afternoon. Traffic was clear both ways, and no rain. It was a mostly eventless drive. No driving around town on either end. It was a pure gas station back to the exact gas station run ... and the last bar was blinking when I refueled.
On the way south, just getting into Atlanta metro, traffic jammed up real quick but it ended real quick too. Evidently just a minute or so before I got to the area, there was a BMW sedan on the right side of the road with a couple youth / young men running around. It looked like they had been towing, at least a couch on likely a similar trailer as I was towing. I saw their hitch and hitch bar, but no ball. It looked like possibly they didn't get their ball on tight and it came off ... and their chains didn't do what they were supposed to do (if they had chains). A couch was destroyed and on the side of the road. It looked like their trailer dropped off, went to the right, dumped the furniture off at speed then the trailer proceeded to go way off the road to the right, as I never saw it. Looked like no-one else was involved and no-one was hurt, thank goodness. But it made me paranoid. But alas, my setup was all good and it made it there and back with no issues.
I sat the pressure washer where I did to not add tongue load, and to hold down the rear gate to minimize the gate banging the floor. I had also added some foam gasket type material to the door where it bangs the floor. So the noise was much less. The one strap holds the gate down, but doesn't completely stop it from lifting off the floor enough to stop it from banging. And there's a V-shaped relief in the plastic trim of the pressure washer so that nothing was touching the gate's flange (as you can see in the last picture).
Last edited by 7milesout; 09-13-2021 at 02:02 PM.
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View my fuel log 2020 Mirage ES 1.2 manual: 42.4 mpg (US) ... 18.0 km/L ... 5.5 L/100 km ... 51.0 mpg (Imp)