When hitting the toughest tracks around Australia, it’s fairly unlikely that your 4WD will be beating any world records for fuel mileage, this is and has always been a fact, whilst fuel economy is a balance between engine power and your vehicles weight, there are a handful of things we can do to make sure that our 4WD’s aren’t drinking more than their share of fuel!

Firstly, every ounce counts, when packing for your trip away, make sure you leave all the unnecessary gear at home. If you are heading into the desert, don’t pack your surfboard and fishing rods, although there may be a rare opportunity to pull out your favorite toy, if the chances are that you probably won’t be using it, leave it at home. This may seem like overkill, but if your vehicle weighs in at 2800kg bone dry, every passenger, suitcase and bit of luggage makes a difference to how much energy your donk needs to keep everything flying along at track speeds!

Keep an eye your tyre pressures, the higher your tyre pressures the less rolling resistance they will encounter, but too high and your suspension will be doing all of the hard work, and in the tough stuff highway pressures will actually reduce your effective contact patch area underneath your 4WD.

By dropping your tyre pressures when you hit the soft stuff using the Adventure Kings Kwiky Tyre Deflator, you should always re-inflate them with your Thumper Air compressor when you get to the other side this will make sure that you aren’t running on low pressures for longer than necessary, this will also help get more life out of your tyres!

When considering efficiency, there are many variables that make efficiency take a dive, things like dirty air filters can make your engine suffer, it’d be like running a marathon whilst wearing a dust respirator for your car, particularly when you are in bull dust country air filters can fill up really quickly!

By also keeping an eye on your oil levels, your wheel bearings condition, and everything else that makes your vehicle roll, you can reduce the amount of friction your motor and drivetrain are fighting every revolution!

When packing your 4WD it pays to think of it like a brick on wheels, this analogy has been used before, but 4WD’s are notoriously poor performers when it comes to aerodynamics, and when you consider that a 2” lift kit presents an additional 2” of vehicle to the front of your vehicle, you can be excused for thinkin that there is not much you can do in this department.

Whilst our 4WD’s typically have rubbish aerodynamics, its important to not make them perform any worse, by packing your Steel Roof Racks with low air resistance in mind, you may be able to cut off a few L/100km than you were previously getting.

The last factor in keeping your fuel economy in respectable figures is to adjust the nut behind the wheel (YOU) by adjusting your driving style you will find that you can get astonishing fuel consumption figures, keeping rpms as low as they can be without making your motor struggle, changing up early and not racing off every set of lights a 4WD can present you with figures nearing that of a family sedan.

So next trip don’t just accept that you are destined to have to refuel every 150km, make some adjustments to your setup and driving style and save some of your hard earned for a coldy in a country pub!