longest road trip in your x5

[Henn28]

Drove the X5 to Kansas and back last week to help my younger Griff live his best life.

As the saying goes: bird hunting is about making sure your bird dog has a fun day.

The X5 was a beast again and covered the 2000 miles without any drama other than a frozen drivers side door handle on the last morning. It was 15 degrees and the previous day had seen a forecast of “light snow flurries” turn into a nasty 8 hours of wet snow and 30 mph winds. The Quaife differentiatial in the X5 is an absolute game changer in these conditions. We hunted all afternoon and drove out with zero drama (aside from me trying to get sideways on purpose a few times). The Geolanders perform great in these situations too.



MPG uncorrected for the Geolanders was pure crap at 13.5. I ran some calculations to correct it and came up with 17.4, which was a pleasant surprise frankly with the Thule box, wheels/tires, 4.6, etc, but after further consideration and a sanity check from AndrewWynn, it turns I put the OEsizes into the calculator in the wrong format. Still absolutely crappy MPG. I’d worry that my motor was completely out of tune and I’m damaging it, but the Blackstone reports continue to show an Alusil motor aging gracefully. That said, I could revisit the tune perhaps, in an effort to squeeze a few more MPG out of the beast.