Using Cruise Control

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Berni

I'm confused first time with diesel. You say you will not slow down uphill and than you say the trans. Will slow you down 10-15 mpg?

Explain. I always use cruise unless I'm in mountains..

Jim
 
Bernie-I have never tried hypermiling with a motorhome, gas or diesel, but I have done it with a car.  Was able to go from an average 33 mpg normal driving  to 45 mpg hypermiling.

Paul
 
http://ecomodder.com/forum/EM-hypermiling-driving-tips-ecodriving.php

Lots of useful tips, I would love to have a standard gear box on the MH, but the Allison 6 speed with eco mode and cruise control does a pretty good job an anything except the harder hills, and out here in Utah we have a few of those.

Climbing hills I allow the speed to fall away, while keeping the revs inside the power band for the gear I am in, and working down through the gearbox to maintain the best speed possible, it's not the time to worry about the MPG, time enough to worry about that, coasting down the other side just joking!
 
Jim

Sorry about the confusion. When I was talking about not slowing going uphill, that was just a short demo that using the foot is over kill since the driver tends to over depress the accelerator pedal. Backing off slightly won't slow you down since you are still pushing in enough fuel to maintain your speed. Only works as a demo for a short period of time.

Also, the tranny won't slow you down but will not try very hard to maintain your cruise speed like a gas engine cruise does. When I am climbing the long, steep grades in the west, the tranny is very smart and aims to balance speed and economy. So as I lose speed in the climb, the tranny will downshift but maybe only one gear instead of 2 or 3. This also keeps the engine at lower speed so you get the benefit of the higher torque of the diesel engine. I can afford the couple of extra minutes to climb in lieu of the couple of extra gallons of fuel and cooler engine (when you are feeding too much fuel and have a lot of it unburned, the engine runs hotter).
 
I have a workhorse W22 and I drive by Tachometer.  1800-2000 is the goal, personally I'd prefer a tach control to a cruse control.  When I find either flat ground or a down hill I'll use it but that means not very dang often here in California.

Jeff
 
One big benefit of the cruise contral is you do not have to sit hours on end with your foot in an odd angle pushing on the gas pedal. I prefer the cruise control by far.
 
Using the cruise control, I can drive many, many miles without stepping on any pedals. The cruise speed buttons are right under my thumbs on the "Smart Wheel" with a 1mph+/- change with a tap of the button. The engine brake control is right under the fingers of my left hand so I can control braking from there. Very convenient, but it doesn't work as nicely on a gas vehicle; everything is too abrupt and you can't control the freewheeling and braking as well.
 
I use cruise control on interstates mostly or straight roads increases mileage. But not on slopes, its better to take control by yourself on slopes.
 
I use cruise control only when I'm on Interstates or open roads that are somewhat flat, otherwise I will turn it off. I drive a Class "C" Ford 450 engine and when I have used the cruise control in the mountains it does shift quite abruptly so I just turn cruise control off and take over manually. I have noticed when I use cruise control on the open roads I can get about 10 mpg but when I'm in the mountains whether on cruise control or not I tend to only get about 7-8 mpg. Once I move out of California then I can use cruise control more and save on the mpg. 8)
 
I guess I use ours about the same as many others.  But I'll share.  We live in Norhtern Nevada, at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, so no matter where we go, we're climbing and descending grades.  I use the cruise control when it's flat and on very mild grades that require only turning off the overdrive.  If a hand shift from one gear to another is needed I disengage the cruise control.  On steep grades I don't usually allow the transmission to shift automatically.  I downshift before I reach the steepest part of the grade.  If the climb is preceded by a downhill I'll let gravity help me build up a little more speed before beginning the steep climb.  Our transmission is an Allison 4 speed.  I wish sometimes it had 1 more gear, but it gets the job done nicely.
 
We recently drove from Denver over the I-70/Eisenhower Tunnel highway.  Before starting we decided to test the cruise control usage vs. manually adjusting the speed.  After a very short time we found that the "economy" mode was the worst so took it off economy.  By the end of the first large uphill we were as slow as the slow trucks so took it off cruise control, got up some speed on the next downhill, and drove the remainder of the way without the cruise control.  As we've all commented in many previous discussions, the cruise control is fine on the flat or nearly flat highways, but it has to work 'way too hard to keep speed up when going uphill (we had it set at 55 mph).  We did this test because the last time we drove this road we were busy talking and not paying attention to cruise control.  As we got around 11,000 feet elevation we realized we had slowed to about 20 mph!  As soon as we took it off cruise control we started regaining our speed.  This time it (the Cummins diesel 500 hp) performed significantly better without cruise control.

ArdraF
 
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