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Fuel. You gotta have it. You need it to get from point A to point B with (or without) your RV. My RAM comes with a 32 gallon tank. Not too bad as far as cars go. But diesel engines drink fuel. Especially when pulling a load. I’m currently averaging around 19 miles per gallon (mpg) so I can go over 600 miles on a single tank.
Pulling a heavy RV will drop the mileage down to the 10 mpg range. That means I’ll be able to go a maximum distance of about 320 miles to empty. Realistically I’ll need to plan to stop for fuel between 200-250 miles. While I haven’t started traveling yet, based on many other RVers I’ve watched on Youtube, they often go much farther in a day. Several of them use a range of 350 miles as a comfortable range to travel in a day. That means I’ll need to find a gas station that is large enough to allow a vehicle towing a trailer to pull in to fuel up. Easy to do on the interstate highways with the many truck stops designed to accommodate the larger vehicles. Not as easy when you’re keeping to the more scenic back roads. Hence the need for a larger tank.
One of my hard limitations on this aux fuel tank was that it fit underneath a tonneau cover. It turns out this was a bugger. I looked and looked and searched many youtube videos and blogs, visited a couple of local shops but nothing stood out. I even looked for a larger replacement fuel tank but the largest I could find was 50 gallons which wasn’t really large enough to give me the extra range I was looking for. However I did stumble across a message in a Dodge Ram forum that suggested one particular model for an aux fuel tank – a Titan Travel Trekker.
This tank fits in the truck bed and connects to the existing fuel system through the vent line. Adding this tank will give me effectively 80 gallons and a range of about 800 miles pulling the RV. Why is this important or desirable? It is highly unlikely I’ll be traveling more than that in any one day. So this volume of fuel will allow me to drive straight to the next camp site, set up and unhook the RV. At that point, without pulling the RV around, I’ll have the freedom to get in to any gas station that has diesel to fill up.
I plan on sharing the installation process here with photos once that is done.
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