fuel

Truck Owners, I am on night shift with too much time on my hands and as one of us fond of saying ENQURING MINDS NEEDZ T NO...

I would like some idea of what sort of fuel consumption L per 100K
and or M P G I might expect from my Perkins Powered ACCO ?????

Educated guestimates will accepted, because I have no idea at all.....
(dont say it)

I am just preparing the wallet for Alice Spings next year... 4500 k round trip.

Sarge :-X

Between 15 and 20 to the gallon if you take it easy. Dunno what that is in litres ?

G'day Sarge, I have to agree with Atkipete, we have a D3F Dodge with a 6-354 Perkins and 6 speed Commer box. Running empty it gets 20mpg and with a 110 Inter and 4x200 litre drums of diesel on the back it still gets 15mpg while sitting on 90kph. (I like mixing metric and imperial).

Sarge - Is a single drive or tandem? What is the tare? I used to get about 10-12mpg with the 6-354 powered tandem ACCO-DF-1840 tipper that tared out at over 7 tonnes. She was geared for 80 km/hr flat out (50mph), but you couldn't stay in top for too long, even empty.

A single drive tray top should get around 15 mpg at hwy speeds, if you aren't too heavily loaded. A lot depends on the country you're traversing. There's a lot of long gradients in the Western and Southern goldfields of W.A. that really drag you down, and you can spend a lot of time in cogs other than top .. which really starts chewing the fuel ..

G'day Sarge and all,
15 mpg converts to 18.83 litres / 100k,
16mpg.....17.66 l / 100 k
17mpg.....16.61
18mpg.....15.69
19mpg.....14.87
20mpg.....14.12
hope this helps mate, I still can't get my head around anything but MPG, I always have to convert it back,
regards Harleigh.

Thankyou gentlemen,
The truck is a 20 ft tray and tares out at 5.00 t, it has a later 2 spd diff + 5 spd O/D box that lets me gallop along at 100 without bouncing the valves.
So at a rough calculation using Harleigh's converter, 4500 k and 15 mpg or 18 l x 100k = about 800 l @ maybe $1.30 litre means I need a grand, plus expenses.

So I mow the lawn 25 times, hang out the wash 10, cook tea 15, make the bed 11, mother law to stay - 1 week, grovel.... lots. I should be ok on the day.


Sarge :-X

Hi sarge, About 30 years ago the council where i worked had a tandem drive leyland with a6-354 perkins in it and a 5 by 3 gearbox . The driver, drove it like he hated it and he reckon it didnt matter if he carted roadbase from the quarry all day or drove round town empty all day .It got 19 miles to the gallon day in day out but it was all most new back then and years have a narsty way of changing performance and economy in motors.ian.

I reckon you might get up to 20mpg, particularly if you havent got much load on and you sit on about 90ks. When you have to use that last bit of throttle, which starts it smoking is when you burn the juice.
Some of your other maths is a bit suspect however, diesel might be more like $1.60 a litre up there and your mother in law will be there for 19 years. LOL

i was getting 14mpg out of my old acco and that was dragging a big pan ..i reken 16mpg with a tray ..as dont forget the non turbo perkins have a special gas pedal .... the accelerator pedal is usually on the floor ! but they are a reliable motor that save the human body from G forces

atkipete is right. Once you leave the city and get out in the bush, fuel prices skyrocket very rapidly. You'd be well advised to carry a decent supply of cheap fuel when you leave. Here's a pic of a nasty shock the missus and I got last July, at Rum Jungle, when we were touring the NT .. look at the middle row of numbers .. and yes .. it reads $2.03 a litre .. :'(

Needless to say, we didn't sit on 120kmh on this trip. We were in no hurry anyway, and were doing the dawdling tourist bit, much encouraged by these kind of numbers on bowsers .. :'(

We had one of the Backpacker/Britz/Maui 2-berth Mercedes campers with the 3L diesel. I was more than surprised to get nearly bang-on 30pmg (7.85L/100kms) by sitting on 85-90 kmh most of the time we were touring the Kakadu region.
Of course, if you have sizeable distances to cover, and limited time, you need to sit on near 100 kmh.