1800-mile trip report | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

  • Register Today It's free!

1800-mile trip report

riderdan

Member
Joined
June 26, 2011
Messages
15
Reaction score
0
City, State
Santa Clara, CA
Year, Model & Trim Level
2011 XLT
Last week I loaded up the family in our 2011 Explorer and set out from the San Francisco Bay Area to SLC Utah. The trip went great, and we were glad to have the Explorer as opposed to our old car.

Overall the Explorer performed well, including some limited off-road and dirt road driving in Wasatch Mountain State Park. The (non-AWD) Explorer handled the washboard-surface dirt roads quite nicely and was nimble enough (for a 4000lb vehicle) on the single-lane asphalt roads we were on. I did notice several times that the ground clearance is limited--at least once I checked as I slowly rolled over a medium-sized bump and the bottom of the vehicle was within an inch or two of the dirt.

Trip average MPG was 24.8. That included some very mountainous terrain on winding roads in the Park, as well as a good bit of city driving. The best tank-full an impressive 28.7 MPG on the flatter stretch of U.S. 80 between SLC and Reno. The best fuel economy seemed to come right around 72-74 MPH, significantly worse at higher speeds.

MFT/Sync worked well in general. We have an iPad set up between the front seats for the kids to watch videos on as we drive and used the Bluetooth audio to play the sound through the Explorer's speakers. We also have a USB drive loaded up with a few hours worth of kids music, which the little ones enjoyed. The turn-by-turn directions worked out well, and we were even able to find directions to an obscure restaurant using the "Find a business" feature.

I did experience two MFT glitches along the way. Once the system stopped responding and rebooted itself in the hotel parking lot, and once the turn-by-turn directions were dropped from the system while driving. Neither glitch was a serious problem, though both were annoying.

Overall, a great time and a great car.
 



Join the Elite Explorers for $20 each year.
Elite Explorer members see no advertisements, no banner ads, no double underlined links,.
Add an avatar, upload photo attachments, and more!
.





Great report! We have a trip from Kansas City to Michigan coming up, and in all thats going to be similar miles (counting there and back and driving around while there). Glad to hear we can expect good things from it since we had pushed pretty hard to make sure we had the Ex before the trip.

How did you mount up the iPad? I thought about getting one of those cup holder mounts I have seen, wondering if that's what you used.

Thanks!
 












How did you mount up the iPad? I thought about getting one of those cup holder mounts I have seen, wondering if that's what you used.

Thanks!

Well, it's sort of a Rube Goldberg thing that I hacked up out of a DVD player mount I bought after the first iPad mount I purchased turned out to be a complete dud. The original didn't last 10 minutes :-(

If you just want something quick and easy, my original solution involved a document pocket (clear plastic sleeve that's supposed to protect a sheet of paper in a three-ring binder) and the shoulder strap off an old piece of luggage :)
 






How did you get such good gas mileage? I can only get 19.5 right now, but I haven't really taken any long trips. A few short trips of about 300 miles round trip. That is amazing gas mileage.
 






How did you get such good gas mileage? I can only get 19.5 right now, but I haven't really taken any long trips. A few short trips of about 300 miles round trip. That is amazing gas mileage.

Well, it's pretty flat between SLC and Nevada and that tankful was all highway miles. I think keeping the average MPH around 70 made a pretty big difference, too--cruise control was on the whole way and there was very little traffic.

Other than that, I'm not sure what might make the difference. I'm getting between 16 and 18 in town, depending on how hard I push the accelerator :)
 






Back
Top