Thought some of you might be interested in the mileage we've been getting with our Tacoma plus 24' Elkmont combo. Here's a probability graph:
http://picasaweb.google.ca/lh/photo/...eat=directlink
Each point represents the mileage (MPG, American gallon) for a single tank of gas. And yes, there's many tanks of gas. Texas to Ontario, then to Nova Scotia and Return, and to the west coast and return.
The usual values cluster around 12 - 14 mpg, averaging about 13 mpg. Not too bad, but then I rarely exceed 60mph (100 km/h).
The lowest values, 9 - 10.5 mpg occurred heading west through Manitoba, facing a strong prairie headwind. Fifth gear just couldn't handle it, so we were in fourth almost all the time. This lasted about a day and half, and for the first time I regretted purchasing an upright trailer.
On the other hand, on the way back in Montana we got some good tail winds that helped boost our mileage to the 14-15 mpg range. (Any MPG data over 15 occurred when we did a lot of driving without the trailer).
The mountains were not as bad as the prairie head winds, we were usually in the 10.5-12 mpg range.
On the level, the truck spent most of it's time in fifth gear, occasionally dropping to a torque converter intermediate between fourth and fifth. But if that lasted too long I'd force it into fourth so that torque converter would not generate too much heat.
Generally cruise control worked fine on the level. But as the hills get steeper and longer, it tries to aggressively maintain speed and drops into third gear waaay too soon. So I'd stop using it there.
As far as I was concerned, there were no problems with power in the mountains. The worst was probably at the top of Stevens pass in the Cascades, where we were moving at 45 mph for several miles in third gear. If you want to go faster there, you'll need a bigger engine than the Tacoma's V6.
I use engine braking a lot going downhill, so brake fade never became a issue. This was discussed more in the Tacoma+Elkmont Weights thread:
http://www.trailmanorowners.com/foru...ad.php?t=10333