2015 Cascadia OTR Performance

For Economy performance mine does better leaving it in Aecon and 60 MPH on cruise is Darla's "sweet spot" for MPG on the flatter stretches. On the flat and level long stretches I started bumping the cruise up and down 1 MPH at a time and watching the bar. Over or under 60 MPH and the MPG inched down. Stayed maxed at 60. Flat and level, 60 MPH kept the bar hovering around 12 MPG and any little tad of help (wind or "hill") and she went right into E-Coast. They say these things burn about a gallon an hour at idle. If that's true then I'm getting 60 MPG or better whenever she's in E-Coast cause I'm going 60 MPH and she's at idle at 600 RPM. There were times I literally went miles and miles in E-Coast because it was a very slight downgrade. I never knew it was a downgrade before (or some of the super subtle upgrades - the bar goes down from 12 MPG to 6 or 7) because they look very flat. Not Bonneville Salt Flats flat but I always thought that stretch of 10 was flat but it actually has a very subtle and long up or down to it.

For the rolling hills, 63 MPH was the sweet spot b/c the little extra speed helped float the hills crest to crest. The larger rollers and big pulls, nothing helped and my best MPG was let her do her own thing on cruise in Aecon. However, it did help when I figured out her ways on the down slide. She'll downshift to keep speed down. Sometimes I don't want that and I want to let her roll. A tiny tad of foot on the throttle and she wouldn't downshift and she'd roll. E-Coast is great but a short one and a coming outta it onto a "no load" flat stretch I found she doesn't reengage until she's about 2 MPH under her cruise speed which causes the MPG bar to drop into the 5 range til she gets back up to cruise. When I'm playing the Max MPG game, I found I did better when I had a flat stretch in front of me to tap the throttle a hair about 2 MPH above the cruise speed to go ahead and disengage E-Coast. The bar then just dropped to 8-9 and when she clicked back in on cruise hovered 10 and 12 b/c she didn't have to add any power to get back up to cruise speed.


Really started playing w/ the Jakes - but that is a trip and I need to get my happy arse onto the Happy Trails. The Jakes are intuitive and adaptive too. Unless running in Manual, they take a little getting used to (but do a great job) too. What a shock right? Deceleration or Descent Mode or Manual Mode. Wow. Hi. My name is Aminal and I'm a Rookie driver. LOL.

Be SAFE and Happy Turkey Day.

 

Put a hood on Porky cause po widdle piddy goin to bacon bits!! Dominus Ominus, E Pluribus Unum, Spiritus Santi SKILLET-US!! Snap, Pop and Crackling's! OH Yeah! I'll let him have a hoodie for that. Hell, I'll give him my old one if he wants. Just keep the bacon rolling!

I think you're absolutely right, though. This thing DEFINITELY takes a LOT of getting used to, and I think a lot of old shcoolers just aren't willing to give it a fair shake and maybe think two or three days and they'll have it down or be done with it. It definitely doesn't work that way with his configuration. It really is like learning to drive all over again the first 90 days you solo'ed. Every evolution we execute is now executed differently in the sense we have an all new everything than we are used to. It shifts differently, it throttles differently, it climbs and descends differently, it Jakes differently and it backs differently. About the only thing not different is cruising on the flats and even THAT is a tad different!

To be fair, blunt and honest, though; it does a great job and much more fuel efficiently (and that is the main thing for those of us that pay for our own fuel - myself anyway) than any Lead Mule I ever drove. It's just very different and different is hard for some of us older Drivers that been doin' this a minute or two. The older humans get, the slower and more shallow our learning curve gets and that - like many things that come with the grey "wisdom hairs", is sometimes a hard pill to swallow so we tend to look outward for the reason whatever we are having trouble with isn't working for us like it should. Or like we want it to anyway.

I think this is a FINE Mule and the problems I'm having are all mine. Not Darla's. Fair is fair. She's doin' her part and doin' it exactly as ordered and spec'd. I'm the one that needs to Cowboy up and get my head in my rig's game deeper than I have been. One thing about the grey hairs; once we realize and understand the issue - we have 40 tons of knowledge and millions of miles of experience to snatch the rose without getting pricked, CONSISTENTLY and DILIGENTLY and with LONEGEVITY. Kinda one of the neat things about the Grey. Takes us a little longer to "get it"; but when we do there's no stoppin' us and we will roll the stroll way past the nay-sayers.

Have a good one all. Can't talk about MPG. Wouldn't be fair. I got a (yeah, sit down for this) 1,700 mile empty run for a Tyson p/u! I dread Tyson because - duh!! It's Tyson. Murphy (Murphy's Law - if anything CAN go wrong, it WILL go wrong, and it will do so at the worst possible time) will make sure Tyson screws up something; or screws up a bunch of something's. Still. $3.38/g in OR and 1,700 MT miles in front at $1.29/ mile and it worked out ACTUAL MILES, and me MT??!! What??!!?! Where's Porky's hoodie? I'm totally down with the whole world on that deal!! Right?

BTW, fuel is still holding where we last left off (until now - SuuuuWEEETTEE!), and Darla and I are still fussin' 'bout whose in charge on the downslides when I want Jakes. We'll get it, though. Just takes . . . time. Patience is the very first thing we all did or should have learned in this business.

Nite all.

 

Put a hood on Porky cause po widdle piddy goin to bacon bits!! Dominus Ominus, E Pluribus Unum, Spiritus Santi SKILLET-US!! Snap, Pop and Crackling's! OH Yeah! I'll let him have a hoodie for that. Hell, I'll give him my old one if he wants. Just keep the bacon rolling!

I think you're absolutely right, though. This thing DEFINITELY takes a LOT of getting used to, and I think a lot of old shcoolers just aren't willing to give it a fair shake and maybe think two or three days and they'll have it down or be done with it. It definitely doesn't work that way with this configuration. It really is like learning to drive all over again the first 90 days you solo'ed. Every evolution we execute is now executed differently in the sense we have an all new everything than we are used to. It shifts differently, it throttles differently, it climbs and descends differently, it Jakes differently and it backs differently. About the only thing not different is cruising on the flats and even THAT is a tad different!

To be fair, blunt and honest, though; it does a great job and much more fuel efficiently (and that is the main thing for those of us that pay for our own fuel - myself anyway) than any Lead Mule I ever drove. It's just very different and different is hard for some of us older Drivers that been doin' this a minute or two. The older humans get, the slower and more shallow our learning curve gets and that - like many things that come with the grey "wisdom hairs", is sometimes a hard pill to swallow so we tend to look outward for the reason whatever we are having trouble with isn't working for us like it should. Or like we want it to anyway.

I think this is a FINE Mule and the problems I'm having are all mine. Not Darla's. Fair is fair. She's doin' her part and doin' it exactly as ordered and spec'd. I'm the one that needs to Cowboy up and get my head in my rig's game deeper than I have been. One thing about the grey hairs; once we realize and understand the issue - we have 40 tons of knowledge and millions of miles of experience to snatch the rose without getting pricked, CONSISTENTLY and DILIGENTLY and with LONEGEVITY. Kinda one of the neat things about the Grey. Takes us a little longer to "get it"; but when we do there's no stoppin' us and we will roll the stroll way past the nay-sayers.

Have a good one all. Can't talk about MPG. Wouldn't be fair. I got a (yeah, sit down for this) 1,700 mile empty run for a Tyson p/u! I dread Tyson because - duh!! It's Tyson. Murphy (Murphy's Law - if anything CAN go wrong, it WILL go wrong, and it will do so at the worst possible time) will make sure Tyson screws up something; or screws up a bunch of something's. Still. $3.38/g in OR and 1,700 MT miles in front at $1.29/ mile and it worked out ACTUAL MILES, and me MT??!! What??!!?! Where's Porky's hoodie? I'm totally down with the whole world on that deal!! Right?

BTW, fuel is still holding where we last left off (until now - SuuuuWEEETTEE!), and Darla and I are still fussin' 'bout whose in charge on the downslides when I want Jakes. We'll get it, though. Just takes . . . time. Patience is the very first thing we all did or should have learned in this business.

Nite all.

 

Perfectly stated. It is simple, and there's always Manual Mode to fall back on. Learning to OPTIMIZE for the great fuel economy potential is the trick. As a matter of fact, I got frustrated trying to optimize using the Jakes on I-5 heading up from LA to Portland and just reverted to Manual. Those big down slides in that traffic and 45K and change in the box (liked to never scaled the axels- had to run no more than half tanks on fuel) was no place for my shallow learning curve. It's a Bambi Basher; not a 4 wheeler bumper basher. Right? Best I should learn how the Jakes hold in what gear on what grades first so I did the down runs in manual and selected a gear that held it at the speed I wanted- not what the autobrain wanted to do. They did great BTW. Hardly had to touch the service brakes at all and that only when a car or RV came back over from passing me a little closer than I liked. Several times I found myself upshifting or reducing Jakes or both cause she was slowing me down on a 6%.

Another thing with the new DD15 itself the DVD emphasized a couple times is no warm up. PTI, light of the main and roll. I'm not there yet. Best I can manage so far is to let her idle when I'm saying my pre-trip prayer and then rolling. So, I've shaved down warm up a good bit but I'm not to the point of fire it up and roll.

 

I don't know. I'm with you Cranky. I climb a hill watching my temp and generally hit my fan on as soon as I downshift that first time if I see it's any kind of descent climb. I don't usually wait for the temp to go up and the sensor to kick it on. To me, letting it wait until it's already good and hot while still generating the extra heat from the climb is fighting the thermal curve, and it stays hot all the way up. Doing it early it never gets hot in the first place. It stays right at 190-200 the whole climb even on asphalt smokin' hot days (the days you smell the asphalt cooking the second you get out of the truck). I know I'm cutting into my MPG but I figure at that point conservation is a foregone conclusion and toast anyway so I do what I can elsewhere, kill it as soon as I crest and keep the engine cool. I boiled my big kitty over hossin' up a hill on 64 in MD back in the day, cause I wasn't watching the temp. That was no fun. I been kinda skittish about my climb temp ever since. Maybe I need to re-think it. I have let the sensor manage the fan clutch a few times, not paying as close attention as I shoulda, and she didn't get too close to redline, but I was outta my temp comfort zone for the rest of the climb cause that's where she stayed. She didn't drop. The fan didn't cool at that point. It just kept the temp from rising any more. Didn't seem to hurt anything, though. My goodness, though, there are so many changes to driving style on so many levels with these new configurations. You said a mouthful for sure when you said this ain't your Daddy's Buick.