Costco gas isn't known for best MPG. Shell and Chevron gas are better in terms of mileage. They cost more, but longer range per tank is worth it when doing long road trips.
Honestly it was allot for us, I normally only put 5-10K miles on a car in a year, even with a 80 mile commute. In many ways I took it as a challenge, really wanted the 40K mark, but we had to cancel a 5K mile trip to Cali due to the fires and injury and we used another car for a different trip.
That is a 1 up usa rack, it is supposed to fold, but I need a hitch extender to properly use it. But it worked in a pinch.
Really cool write up.. makes me want to the same trip! What color is your Jeep? Is that Sting Gray?Let me first say, this is our first Wrangler, so many of my observations are probably well known to those in the Jeep community. Second, my wife and I like to take road trips, when we were both working from home in 2021, we did 30K miles in road trips alone that year, would have been closer to 40K but I got injured on one.
As I mentioned, this is our first Jeep and while I've wanted a jeep for well over 10 years, the powertrain options didn't motivate me. Passing power on the highway is a important feature on any car we buy, so the 392 really checked all the boxes.
We got the Jeep on the Monday before we were set to leave, so it was a last minute decision to take the Jeep. Funny enough, in the weeks leading up to the trip we were debating between taking my wife's car which gets 27mph on premium on the highway, but is less comfortable or mine which gets 17 mpg on regular, but is more comfortable on the highway. What did we do, decided to throw that all out the window and take the Vehicle that gets 14 mpg on premium on the highway and is the loudest.
We left our house in Texas on a Friday with 50 miles on the odometer and made it to Van Horn, Texas that night. Those familiar with that stretch of I-10 know there isn't much beyond Sand, Coyotes, Cops, and 80 mph speed limits. In our other cars we'd normally do 87-90 mph through here, but in the 392, we only did 83-85, still only managed 13.2 MPG for this section.
The next day was the longest day of our Drive, 12 hours from Van Horn, TX to the Hoover Dam, NV. We figured out where every Costco was between the two stops and got very comfortable with the XR 392's natural habitat, the gas station. Even with slightly lower speed limits, still were only pulling out 13.5 mpg.
The third day was a short day, Las Vegas, NV to Mammoth Lakes, Ca. This is one of our favorite drives, we do it nearly every year, and it has wonderful scenery. This time we got to get off pavement a bit and explore a few trails I've always wanted to do.
We spent the next week in Lake Tahoe with family, did a few small trails, but just tried to use as little of that $7 gas as possible.
After a week, we headed to Ely Nv for the night. The next morning we headed to Great Basin National Park. This is a park that we want to head back to in the future. There are many high clearance/4WD trials that we'd like to explore in the future, but didn't have time this trip. We ultimately headed through Moab to Durango Co that day. All in all this was a 10-12 hour day with driving to the park, spending time in the park, and then heading to Durango. It was also the most exhausting drive day as we encountered storms in Utah with crazy crosswinds. That all said, Tahoe to Durango was our most efficient section of the trip, with an average mpg about 16 and we saw stretches in the 18-20mpg range.
When we made it to Durango, we didn't get to do as much wheeling as we'd like. There were storms every afternoon and we just had other plans. But we did make it up Ophir pass. Hopefully by the end of summer we'll be back and I plan to do Alpine loop and Imogene Pass. I'd like to do Black Bear, but don't want to go it alone.
Overall we love our XR 392, this trip we put about 3700 miles on it in a span of 2 weeks and overall averaged 14-15 mpg. We did develop an issue with the brake pedal around 2K miles, at times it will shudder, or stick in the first 1/2-1 in of pedal travel. it won't always do it and it isn't consistent, but it is annoying when it does it. It isn't in the rotors, but something in the booster or master cylinder. Other than that the 392 has been awesome.
One positive of the Jeep is it does not encourage you to speed, not that the 392 doesn't beg to be at WOT all the time, singing that glorious song, but between the fuel economy and handling, we kept it to only +5mph the speed limit most of the time. My wife will do 1/3-1/2 of the driving for most of our trips, but due to the crosswind issue, I ended up doing most of the driving.
Most of our road trips vehicles have been full size trucks or Suvs, with the odd sports car or sport sedan mixed in. Honestly after this trip I don't see that changing. The Jeep is wonderful, but can be tiring on the open road. In a full size SUV we can do 8-12 hours without much fatigue, although 16 hours is about our max with both of us driving. A full size SUV can be a handful in strong cross winds, many times we avoid I-40 for that reason, but the Wrangler is another story. As I'm sure many of you know, even in light winds it can be a battle, and when doing that for 8-10 hours, is another level of fatigue. That combined with the noise from lower levels of insulation in the interior is 1-2 punch. I do plan to add headliners to help a bit with noise and heat. In some parts of AZ and TX we had issues keeping the interior cool.
Long term our plans is to have the 392 be our adventure vehicle for trails and off-grid camping, but keeping those trips to 1000 miles of less and hopefully just in the CO/NV/UT/CA area
Future plans for the Jeep include a few lights, a winch, maybe a new rear bumper, and eventually 37s.
I have more scenery photos if anyone is interested, tried to keep photos mainly Jeep related.
thank you! Yes, Sting Grey.
