On our last trip to South Australia we had to stop almost every day to fuel up our car.
Our usual strategy is to fill up when we have about 1/2 of a tank left. At that stage we are still picky about the price and source. When we have about 1/3 of fuel left we pick the next petrol station. At about 1/4 we start thinking about not making detours.
This usually works out fine in those areas that have over a hundred kilometers between stations.
On the trip from SA to Vic we passed several closed or shut down fuel stations between Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning and the last one had run out of diesel. The next fuel stations were in about ~50km vicinity in all directions and we had no mobile phone reception. We headed for the one that was one our way in the hope that it would have diesel with about 1/6 of fuel left in our tank. We ended up having to drive very fuel efficient, since we actually wanted to see a national park that added another extra 40 km. We managed to find a spot that had reception on the way into the national park called the service station and they still had fuel and we did get to see the koalas in the national park and still made it. But we did feel uneasy the whole time and I would touch the gas pedal with the caution one would use when putting a foot on a raw egg.
With strong winds, loading batteries, fridge, full time AC, high speeds and locked hubs our car’s fuel efficiency can deteriorate to 15l per 100km. Without the locked hubs it’s about 14l/100km and under normal conditions it’s about 13l on 100km. When we drive with 80km/h we can get it down to about 9l. The original fuel tank is about 90l large and that gave us a range of about 600km to 900km. But realistically it would be about 720km.
We talked about a replacement fuel tank since we bought the car but wanted to wait until after the three year warranty had expired. Since then we forgot to actually get it. Last Tuesday we finally had a 166l Long Ranger replacement tank installed at ARB St Peters and now should be able to have a range of 1100km in bad conditions and a normal range of 1300km.
It will be interesting to see how much the additional weight will affect our fuel efficiency.