Nothing notable accomplished this weekend. I drove the K5 to Denver this weekend to visit my parents and prowl a couple of u-pull it yards for some parts to the K5 side of the project. I drove the K5 as a test run to see how it would handle at highway speeds and see how the fuel economy is impacted.
I figured out a couple of things.
#1. The blind spot created by the camper on the passenger side of the truck is large enough to hide a semi in. Even with the mirror adjusted out. Did ok until a couple of miles out of my parents place when I missed seeing a smaller car that was lower than the window line of the camper. I got a honk and some stern looks. Whoops. Blind spot mirrors are on order.
#2. I now can say what the impact of the camper shape is on the fuel consumption. I totally knew it was going to have an impact, but wasn't quite sure to what extent. I tried to keep it at 65 mph, but without cruise control i found my foot creeping the speed up. Still it knocked 4-5 mpg off of the normal the truck is capable of without the camper. As one would expect, the faster I go the worse it gets. Duh right?
#3. Handling didn't seem to change at all though. Even with wind. The truck was pretty high profile to start with, but I drove up in a pretty good storm Saturday, rain/snow mix plus wind. Didn't phase it.
#4. Driving a rig like this invites strangers to talk to me about it or get the "thumbs up" as they passed me on the road. Got chatted up when I stopped for fuel in Monument. The guy saw me fueling it up and asked a ton of questions and commented how cool it would be to go where ever I wanted to camp. Good thing I'm not shy.
I'm disappointed most in the loss of fuel economy. Makes me regret not going with an 8.1L big block or at least going deeper with the gearing to keep the 5.3 more in it's natural torque band. I can't complain much, because I didn't think a camper was going to be a real possibility when the K5 was put together. I can go down that path later, don't have time before the desert trip.
Edited by Zoomad, 24 April 2018 - 03:24 AM.