Aerodynamics

[Silver-Bolt]

We just returned from our house in NW Montana to our house in Portland. First time doing the trip in the Bronco. Going over we were loaded to the max. Rear seats folded down and packed floor to ceiling, front to back. It was heavy and you could really feel in in the twisty roads. Bronco was flawless. Averaged right at 18.2 MPG for the 600 mile trip. Coming home we were traveling light. Basically empty except for a cooler. As we hit I-90 in Idaho we had a pretty steady wind on the front quarter. By the time we hit Tri-Cities WA it was a solid 25+ MPH wind broad side. It moved us around a lot. The stretch from Tri-Cites going into Oregon it was blasting broadside hard. It took a lot of steering input to keep it straight. When you drive a brick, it's to be expected. When we hit I-84W in Oregon it was a full on head wind. We had the cruise set at 70mph and on level ground it was running 8-11 PSI of boost to maintain 70mph. On the slight downhill it was making 4-6 PSI. Crazy windy. Needless to say our fuel economy coming was horrible. The trans temp stayed pretty low 188deg, but the oil temp crept up to 217 deg. All in all the Bronco did exactly as expected for what it is.

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[Brian_B]

I can recall a stretch on I70 through Utah, where the headwind hit so bad I had to downshift going down hill. But no issues with the power train at all - it just chugged right along (as it chugged down the gas). I rolled into the gas station with 4 miles remaining on the DTE that night.