Roadtrek Adventurous vs Agile vs Blu-Tech: Real-world Mileage

Lenfagan

New member
I have a 2014 CS Adventurous which I purchased new in September. Over Thanksgiving we drove from MA to visit my daughter in Michigan City Indiana. Rough going due to weather, a lot of hills on rt 80 in PA and very windy on the Ohio and Indiana highway (rt 80). The bottom line is by checking the fuel and calculating and comparing to the computor which gives milage they both were close. My milage for the 2000 mile trip was just a little over 20 MPG.

Also only had 1400 miles on it when we started out so maybe some breakin.
By the way it was a bit exciting with the 50 MPH plus cross winds in Ohio and Indiana. Kind of held on for dear life.

Len
 

gkim

Member
We have a 2008 RT RS model and I am asked about the MPG and people want to look inside all the time as we travel. We have 36K miles on our RT and have driven in all kinds of conditions; tailwind, head wind, cross wind, flat ground, mountains, etc and we check each tank. What we have found is that on a bad day we will get 16-18 and on a good day 21-22. These are real numbers and we typically drive 65 on the freeways, however, most of the time our mileage is around 19. This is what I tell people and most are amazed as am I.
Ditto on my 2008 RS as well.
 

Old Crows

Calypso 2014 View Profile
By the way it was a bit exciting with the 50 MPH plus cross winds in Ohio and Indiana. Kind of held on for dear life.

Len[/QUOTE]


Sumo springs, Lads!
 

gte

2008 RS
By the way it was a bit exciting with the 50 MPH plus cross winds in Ohio and Indiana. Kind of held on for dear life.

Len

Sumo springs, Lads![/QUOTE]

Cross winds can be exciting. If sustained it is not as bad as if you pass by features that cause them to be gusty. At 50 I would slow down a lot or maybe stop for a while.
 
My real world fuel mileage. It does not matter how much load I carried, or if A/C on/off.

70mph - 19.5 mpg
65mph - 20.5 - 21.5 mpg
55mph - 22.5 mpg

2011 Agile
 

mscarcella

New member
My experience with MPG has been exactly the same as Sailsailor's... We have the same Roadtrek, a 2008 RS Adventerous 2500 with a fairly solid 19 MPG averaging all kinds of driving conditions.
 

gkim

Member
Ditto on my 2008 RS as well.
Ditto here as well. One additional note, mine is on the 2500 chassis. The 3500 chassis is geared differently and gets 1-2 mpg less. Another note, temperature matters. If the ambient temp is warmer, you get better mpg. Cool or cold brings performance down
 

gte

2008 RS
Ditto here as well. One additional note, mine is on the 2500 chassis. The 3500 chassis is geared differently and gets 1-2 mpg less. Another note, temperature matters. If the ambient temp is warmer, you get better mpg. Cool or cold brings performance down
Agree with both. We typically average 19 with our 2008 RS unless we are driving 60-65 in warm weather, then it is a bit higher.
 

Trekker

Trekker
We used to average around 19 mpg too, but lately it seems to have dropped down about 1.5 mpg. Any thoughts on why it has dropped? Load and driving conditions haven't changed.

2008 Adventurous RS 2500 chassis.
 

gte

2008 RS
We used to average around 19 mpg too, but lately it seems to have dropped down about 1.5 mpg. Any thoughts on why it has dropped? Load and driving conditions haven't changed.

2008 Adventurous RS 2500 chassis.
As mentioned above we usually get 19 mpg during summer traveling, however, we do notice that in colder weather and sometimes with certain fuel sources our mileage may be lower by 1-2 mpg. By colder I mean 0-20 F. With 65k miles I have wondered if the injectors need maintenance or if something else needs some cleaning.
On the positive side, I have noticed a drop in oil consumption with age/miles from a quart every 1500miles or so to less than a quart every 5000 miles. I would like to think this is real and will continue.
 
Re: cross winds

On those cross winds, switch out your shocks to some Koni's. You can not imagine the difference. Like night and day. Original shocks are a hazard to driving.
 

irvingj

2015 RT SS Agile (3.0L)
Just finished a trip out to the west coast and back. Covered 11,151.8 miles, avg fuel use (calculated) was 19.66. 2015 SS Agile with 3.0l V6.

Typically, my calculated mpg was a tad higher (perhaps .4 mpg) than the trip computer indication, a pleasant surprise. Have been very impressed with the power of the V6; in cruise @ around 70mph on interstates, I don't think it downshifted more than five times on the whole trip.
 

sailquik

Well-known member
irvingj,
OK, your 5G-Tronic/NAG-1 transmission only downshifted itself 5 times on your whole trip.
So how many times did you manually downshift it?
There are a whole lot more than 5 uphill grades going from the east coast to the west coast and back no matter which route you take.
Did you encounter any headwinds anywhere.....another situation where a manual downshift can save your a significant amount of fuel
and wear and tear.
How much of the time when you were pulling uphill was the % engine load > 85%... (Probably great deal of the time).
Running your Sprinter RV @ > 85% engine load and RPMs lower than 2600 is really not very good for your engine and
transmission.
You LIKE pulling up hills in a fairly heavily loaded RV in OVERDRIVE (0.83:1 ratio at the back of the transmission).
Not scolding you here... you can drive any way you like, but a Scan Gauge II (or similar performance monitoring gauge
package) could be very enlightening for you.
And it could help you to improve your already impressive mileage at the same time it reduces the overall wear and tear
on your Sprinter's entire drive train and cooling system.
Hope this helps,
Roger
 

irvingj

2015 RT SS Agile (3.0L)
No, I meant other than on narrower, steeper roads-- just on interstates, which have much more gentle curves & grades. That thing really surprised me with its ability to climb. Naturally, when I was really in the mountains on smaller, steeper roads, I didn't use cruise. Most of the time I let the transmission find its own happy spot and do its own downshifting according to speed and load; only occasionally did I manually drop it.

Yes, we did encounter headwinds (and crosswinds, too); the trip meter, as well as my own calculations, showed a drop in mileage, but the engine didn't appear to complain.

As far as RPM, it seemed most happy (and more easily able to climb without downshifting) at around 72-75 mph indicated (I'm thinking 70-73 actual) and 2600-2700 rpm. I'd love to get hold of more specs on the engine; on my Jetta TDI, I know precisely where the torque peak is and when the turbo begins to kick in, but it seems there was precious little technical info on the OM-642 engine and the 5G-Tronic transmission that came with the RV…

So fire away with any tech stuff and/or recommendations!
 

daniii

New member
35000 miles on a 2014 Agile with the 2.1L 4 cylinder motor.

Overall, no trailer, average hiway is 20.3.

Towing open trailer with motorcycle, 19.3

Towing 3000# open trailer with Can-Am motorcycle and "drag shute" framp up, 16.2, hiway.
 

skier1950

Member
My 2012 SS Agile with the V6 on a good day would get 19 mpg. My 2015 SS Agile with the new I4 on a good day will get 23mpg. A good day being no head wind.
 

DAWg134

DaleW
Overall, our 2010 Agile SS (purchased new in December of 2009) has averaged 20.17 to date.

Back in November of 2011, I tried a little experiment during two back-to-back round trips of approximately 1,000 miles apiece - LA to Redding, CA and return (1,103 miles), followed by LA to Tucson, AZ and return (1,096 miles). I consider both trips to be roughly equivalent in that the majority of each trip is via superhighway with posted speed limits of 70-75 mph and limited mountain driving. Here are my results, using cruise control whenever practical:

LA-to-Redding (60 mph max speed) - 24.6 mpg
Redding-to-LA (70 mph max speed) - 21.2 mpg
LA-to-Tucson (75 mph max speed) - 19.3 mpg
Tucson-to-LA (65 mph max speed) - 22.7 mpg
Bottom line - the Sprinter mileage is highly influenced by aerodynamic drag and therefore there is a somewhat non-linear relationship between average speed and fuel mileage. If you want great fuel mileage... slow down. I believe that all of the numbers I see thrown out there for fuel mileage are all legitimate... but speak more to the owner's driving habits than anything else.

Also, it helps if you drive the RV more like a truck than a sports car. My Agile's mileage always suffers noticeably whenever my wife drives as she has a bit of a lead foot when the light turns green - she regularly max's out at 35 inches manifold pressure whereas I rarely get over 25 inches on flat streets. NOTE: I was the sole driver for my fuel mileage experiment.
 
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irvingj

2015 RT SS Agile (3.0L)
That sounds very realistic, thanks. Which engine is in your Agile?

Even my VW TDI (the old engine, not the "new" cheater one :crazy:) also shows similar speed vs. mpg results. I still like the way that V6 pulls, however, when rpm is right around 2600 (70+ mph)!!

PS-- the difference between 55- and 65+ using my TDI to pull an 1800-lb T@B camper (considerably wider & taller than my Jetta wagon) was 32 vs. 18 mpg….. Talk about a parachute!
 

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