In reply to glueguy (Forum Supporter) :
You reminded me of my old bosses 72 or 73 Dodge 2500 tow van. He freshened the 360, and put a 4bbl on it. That came off after the first trip, because the secondaries were open at the speed he liked to tow, which burned gas at a terrible pace. Back to the Carter BBD and a brick on the gas pedal, and he was happy.
keithedwards said:I had a '77 Winnebago Minnie Winnie for a number of years. With the big block 400 Dodge, it would get fractional 7s. Didn't much matter if I was towing my race car. I was thrilled when I logged 8+ mph.
That's another engine that everybody hated before the internet made us all smarter. It'd be worth something now.
In reply to A 401 CJ :
In '77 it would literally have made less power than practically any modern non turbo 2 liter engine. I learned to drive in a '76 Chrysler with a 400. It's not that they were tough, it's that they didn't make enough power to hurt themselves.
Hm, I've had lots of cars with terrible milage. I managed 7.5 towing my trailer to the track with a headwind once.
Worst overall is probably my RX-7 though, it's barely into double digits most of the time.
Driven was a 454 1 ton 4x4 81 Chevy. Regular cab srw long bed, used it for my summer job painting propane tanks all over south eastern Iowa. 3 maybe 4 mpg. We did switch it to LP so I stopped keeping track of it. It was a hoss.
We had a 67 sno-cab Unimog something like this
did not compute....when it needed fuel you put it in, it always needed fuel.
1968 Camaro. 396 ci / 375 HP. 4 speed. 411 gears. It go about 8 MPG. I had sold my '65 TR4A to get it and after driving it for 9 months replaced it with a '71 TR6. That was in summer of '73.
Oh, I forgot the 69 GTX my buddy bought. 440 six pack with a four speed. He loaned it to me to pick up some guys from the airport.
I knew it was a gas hog, so I drove it gently, short shifting, staying under the speed limit, and trying to eke out the best mileage possible. I got a calculated 7 MPG.
1957 Cadillac CDV. On the factory carb and tune that I got the car with 4mpg in the city with a heavy foot and 9 on the freeway. With economy carb and really good tuning I got it up to a respectible 13mpg on the freeway.
2010 Dodge viper. 8.4 Liters of full race motor. ~2.5mpg at full throttle track work. But 31mpg on the freeway being hypermiled.
I also had a 65 Shelby cobra with a built 454 running a 671 blower and ETOH. It had a 5 gallon tank to keep the weight down for drag work and would run out of gas in the burnout box.
My daily driver is a '77 C10, with 11:1 350 with a snotty cam (108°LSA), loose torque converter, no overdrive, and 3.73 gears. I get 10-12 mpg.
I had a V8 Pinto back in university that was high compression 302 and a snotty cam, and got 4mpg, but I'm pretty sure it was an operator error.
I had a V8 Vega in trade school that was probably 9:1 350 and mild cam and 4-speed and got 4, but I the same operator was in service.
Best was an '85 Firefly that could pull off 50mpg in the summer while drafting trucks on the highway.
Moby the road condo gets 11 to 12 mpg which I think is amazing for a 36' 24k lb billboard. The silly Brabus daily driver gets 12 to 15, sometimes 20 if I'm careful. Which um doesn't really happen. The worst is, and close to what WearyMicrobe is finding, is Humpty the Rallykar, all 1.8 liters of it. On a stage we figure we're getting about 4mpg.
^ Just outta curiosity, if you didn't run outta gas in the burnout box, what sort of ET/trap did that blown Cobra manage??
Personal ownership is pretty good. I think my worst overall average was the 62 Comet 289 3spd which got 18-22 usually. My jeep has seen as bad as 17 over a tank but that was 80mph into a 35mph headwind across Kansas with a surfboard on my roof. Heck, my racecar gets 15-17 at WOT on track.
My raceteam owned a 2003 E450 22passenger van with the 7.3 Powerchoke. It got 8 highway, 8 city, 8 towing, 8 unloaded. Then we put a tuner on it and got 9 highway/city. So every trip we took it on we spent a fortune on fuel and a fortune fixing that stupid T444E.
Feedyurhed said:I had a 1999 Jeep Cherokee with a 3" lift and 31" tires. In the winter/snow in AWD I would get 8-9 miles per gallon.
It always blows my mind to see what fuel economy other people get from XJs. Mine get's 21mpg city in the winter with snow tires. Admittedly I don't use 4x4 unless I absolutley need it.
Ford F350 towing a 35' 5th wheel camper got 6.2 mpg at 75 mph. The interesting part is it only got 9-10 mpg empty.
My 31' F53 Tiffin RV gets about 6.5 mph at 75 mph. Driven gently it will get 7-8 mpg.
Really great mpg happens when you buy a boat. My 20' SeaRay got right at 2 mpg at 55 mph. It would suck the 55 gallon tank dry in under 3 hours at WOT.
When it was bone stock my 1978 F-150 4x4 with a 351M/4 spd would get 10 MPG at 60 MPH on the highway. Guys I knew who were familiar with those trucks said that was really good and a 4 bbl conversion and tubular headers would improve that quite a bit.
Instead of making those mods, I installed a 6" lift and 36" Super Swampers. Those did not improve the MPG. Not one bit... I wish I could have kept that truck. I still have the original suspension parts (springs) in my back yard...
In reply to Toyman01 + Sized and :
Boats are usually rated at gallons per minute (GPM) instead of MPG.
I knew a dude who had a Hatteras offshore fishing boat that got 1 GPM. That seemed like a painful way to enjoy being on the water.
This reminds me of the late 60s/early 70s when we used to brag about the poor gas mileage of our muscle cars. Gas was 25 - 35 cents per gallon. First energy crisis caused many muscle cars to be sold very cheap.
In reply to KyAllroad :
I know the boat pain. Mine is definitely the least efficient thing I own by a large margin. There are 2 good cruising speeds for it it: 6.5 - 7 kts (7.5 - 8 mph) and 17 kts (19.5 mph). At the lower of the 2 speeds, it'll get somewhere around 1.3 nautical miles per gallon (1.5 statute miles per gallon). At the faster speed, we're looking at 0.55 nmpg (0.63 statute miles per gallon). Basically, it's a choice of ~5 gallons per hour vs ~30 gallons per hour. Then again, it's a pair of 454s pushing a 26,000 lb chunk of fiberglass through water...
Newspaper delivery trucks got about 5mpg with a full load of newspapers for Sunday, it ships in 2 or 3 parts and anywhere from 1500-3500 papers per part.... didn't matter if it was the f350 with the 351 or the f450/super duty with the 460....
I drove my Camaro on the street for a while and that was probably the worst since the engine burned a gallon a minute on the dyno but it doesn't have an odometer or a gas gauge so I don't really know what kind of mileage it got.
If we discount the Camaro the worst mileage of any road vehicle I've ever owned is my current 2015 RAM 3500. It gets a solid 9 MPG when towing. To be fair, it's also the most powerful truck I've owned and that mileage is with the cruise control set at 82 MPH which it'll hold on just about any hill.
With a 460 built to run on 93 octane, a C6, and 3.50 gears, Plymford averages about 12 gph on a rack track. That works out to something like 5 mpg.
In it's natural habitat:
In reply to jh36 :
Mine was getting a solid 8 to 10 which is double the 1976 chev with full time 4x4 I owned as a kid.
volvoclearinghouse said:With a 460 built to run on 93 octane, a C6, and 3.50 gears, Plymford averages about 12 gph on a rack track. That works out to something like 5 mpg.
In it's natural habitat:
I love Plymford. We need more Plymford!
Highest consumption I ever saw was my vintage Lamborghini that could get down around 10 mpg when being driven con brio. Makes sense with 12 Weber throats pouring it in. But it was the best sounding 10 miles I ever heard!
Had a 455 HO Pontiac that was also thirsty and a couple of 440 Chrysler that didn't exactly sip fuel either. OTOH I had a 383 Chrysler with Sixpack that was pretty good - vacuum secondaries only opened when needed and otherwise you were running on a 500 cfm 2 bbl.
pres589 (djronnebaum) said:'64 Plymouth Savoy, 225 slant & a three-speed automatic.
When your worst mileage car was a slant six, that's saying something. 
I had a job driving a Chevy C50 tilt cab truck when I was in college; I have no idea what kind of mileage that thing got (it was a lot of truck for a 327 small block to push around) but it drank a lot of gas.
1995 GMC K2500 Suburban with the 454 big block. ~10-12 MPG empty. 42-gallon gas tank that would require 2 - 3 credit card swipes to fill when gas got really expensive.
Second worst was probably my 2002 Audi S6 Avant, only because it made such nice V8 noises when wound up it was hard to stay out of the throttle...
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