new to me 05 6spd got some questions

[workingonit]

Originally Posted by freedo

got back from a 1700 mile camper trip. camper is a friends that I borrowed and is a bit large for the m54. 3500lb dry weight and shaped like a brick. probably had another 1300lbs of cargo and people inside. managed to maintain 65mph on the flats in 5th gear, 4th up the hills and 6th down hill. got 11mpg avg....

My wife used to do "catastrophe insurance adjusting" and bought a 2007 Palomino Puma 20QB to have her own housing while doing her insurance work. It worked out fine, being towed behind her '98 GMC Sierra 1500 pickup (which we still have), that had/has the 5.7L V8, 4L60E transmission, 3.73 rear gears, and had the engine power boosted via a custom tune, bigger injectors, etc., and the transmission custom built for towing just before we bought it from my race-car building friend. It also had the light 1500 springs replaced with new 2500 springs.

As I stated, it was a good combo, until she took a 2-month business trip up to Minnesota, driving thru the Ozarks and Missouri, where she visited with relatives on both ends of the trip. On the way back, she called me to complain about the truck having trouble going up hills...no power... so she had to often drop it down into second at times. That worried me, but I couldn't travel up there to see, so I had to wait until she got back to check the truck out.

It turned out that she had been collecting antiques (junk) on the trip, and had stuffed the bed of the truck full, as well as half the trailer. As if that wasn't enough, when I looked into the cross-body storage in the nose of the trailer, it was jam-packed full of "interesting" rocks that she had also collected in the hills of Missouri. The truck wa probably 1000 lbs overweight, and the little trailer even more so. No wonder the truck wasn't as peppy as it should've been. No report on the gas mileage, though.

I made sure that she understood NEVER to repeat the overloading mistake on any future trips (there were only a couple more trips, using her truck & trailer, and thereafter several more via her '08 Cobalt Coupe, without trailer, before she switched jobs...Hurricane Sandy did her in). She still overpacks for even overnight trips to her mother's ranch, only 45 miles away...some people never learn. Kids!!! (she's 14 years younger than I)