Our Fuel Consumption in the Simpson Desert
As we get asked by quite a few people when they are planning their own trips to the Simpson Desert what our fuel consumption has been, we thought we would share some updated more accurate data after we completed another Simpson Desert trip in May 2021.
This is an updated post on what we were able to achieve with our fuel consumption in five days of desert exploring in our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser. Our original post on our fuel consumption in the Simpson Desert and the outback is a good indicator on average, however our fuel consumption in that post included a few hundred kilometres of gravel road driving between Dalhousie Springs and Coober Peedy. In this updated post on our fuel consumption in the Simpson Desert we provide more accurate data as we only had a short amount of gravel road driving between Birdsville and Big Red with most kilometres in the beautiful red sand of the Simpson.
Understanding Your 4WD
In our other fuel consumption post we have gone into some detail regarding understanding your 4WD and its fuel consumption in different driving conditions. This includes calculations on your 4WD’s range, understanding your fuel light, planning your route and more to assist in your calculations. We go through a few examples of our fuel consumption in our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser and how we make our calculations when planning our trips. We will not go over this information again so if you would like to read it check it out here.
Our Simpson Desert Route
When we originally planned our Simpson Desert trip in May 2021, we had originally thought that we would do a double Simpson Desert crossing over about seven or eight days. We always wanted to leave and return to Birdsville as we planned to store our camper trailer DOT373 at Birdsville and needed to return to pick it up. As we would be travelling solo, we did not want to cross the Simpson Desert with our camper trailer, we are also extremely well setup in our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser so there is little need for us to take our trailer. On top of that towing a trailer through the Simpson Desert will require many a recovery, and as we are time poor, we just did not have the additional time that would be needed to constantly deal with a bogged 4WD and trailer. Towing trailers across the desert causes plenty of track damage and we did not feel like dealing with other unhappy Simpson Desert explorers.
So, our original planned route after storing our camper trailer at Birdsville was to take the Inside Track eventually finding the WAA Line and then continuing to Dalhousie Springs and then Mount Dare to refuel. We would then return to Birdsville along the French and QAA Lines. Fortunately for Central Australia they had lots of rain which was unfortunate for us as this led to track damage and track closures. As a result, we changed our plans and reduced our Simpson Desert trip to five days. Our updated route was again leaving from Birdsville, taking the QAA Line, then the French Line until we reached The Knolls Track. We took The Knolls Track to the WAA Line then on to the Erabeana Track and back to the French Line. We then returned to Birdsville along the French and QAA Lines. Now that we use the ExplorOZ Traveller app on our iPad (we deleted Hema Explorer and will write another post explaining why) we plotted this planned route on the app to give us a total distance. We worked out that it would be approximately 550kms. We then used these kilometres to do our fuel calculations.
Our 4WD's Range
As per our calculations in our last Simpson Desert crossing, we worked off a fuel consumption of 20 to 21 litres per 100kms. Based on approximately 550kms this would mean we needed between 110 and 115.5 litres of fuel. Our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser still has the stock Toyota fuel tank with a total capacity of 130 litres. Based on these fuel consumption calculations we would have more than enough fuel to complete our planned route. However, as we never know what might happen, we chose to carry an additional 20 litres of fuel in a jerry can using the Svnty6 Fab foam jerry can mount on our Rhino Rack Pioneer Platform. This gave us a total of 150 litres of fuel at an estimated range of 710 to 750kms working off 20 and 21 litres per 100kms. This provided us with more than enough comfort if there was some sort of a problem and we needed to take a detour or help someone else out who might be in trouble. So now that we have completed this trip, what was our actual fuel consumption and how far off were we in our pre trip planning calculations?
Our Actual Simpson Desert Fuel Consumption
Our actual fuel consumption in the Simpson Desert in our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser was 19.12 litres per 100kms. This turned out to be just within our best-case estimate of 20 litres per 100kms. We travelled a total of 541kms and used a total of 103.44 litres of fuel. This was not a bad result.
Fuel Consumption – 19.12 litres / 100kms
Distance Travelled – 541kms
Total Fuel Used – 103.44 litres
For comparison purposes it would be a good idea to highlight a few important factors as these have an impact on how much fuel we used and will be useful in your own calculations.
- Our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser is a V8 and averages around 12-13 litres per 100kms during normal day to day bitumen driving. Off-road, towing and sand driving can be anywhere between 15 to 20 litres per 100kms.
- We have had a dyno tune and ECU remap completed by Just Autos giving us 50% power gains and 100% torque gains. Since this remap, we have seen slight fuel consumption improvements during normal day to day bitumen driving but not off-road.
- Our total weight is just below GVM at 3,060kgs.
- Throughout the Simpson Desert our tyre pressures ranged from 15 to 18 PSI all around.
- We have 33-inch KM3 mud terrain tyres on steel rims which are significantly heavier than the stock Toyota alloy rims and 31-inch tyres. You can read our post here comparing weights.
- We did four runs up the steep tracks on the western side of Big Red which would have affected how much fuel we used.
- Most of the trip we drove in 4WD high not low range which would have helped our fuel consumption. We only drove in low range up Big Red and a couple of other dunes where the tracks were steep and in real bad condition from poor driving from other travellers.
The above dot points are something to consider even if you have a similar 4WD as they will have an impact on fuel consumption. If you do not have a V8 and your day to day driving fuel consumption is better than ours then you will most likely have slightly better consumption in the desert. Your fuel consumption in the Simpson Desert will be greatly affected on how you drive, tyre pressures and how often you use low range. We have had significant power increases from our Just Autos ECU remap and custom dyno tune, but somehow managed to get slight improvements in our fuel economy. Weight is a big factor to be considered as well. If you have a GVM upgrade and are well over 3-tonnes, this will have a big impact on your fuel consumption. Running smaller or bigger tyres will also impact these figures. Finally, how you drive will also play a big part. If you have to use low range constantly to get up some of the dunes as you do not have the low-end torque and power to get over them easily, this will reduce your fuel efficiency. There are several factors that will impact how much fuel you will use so just be aware of them and be conservative when making your fuel assumptions.
Total Fuel Consumption in the Outback Towing
To finish off we thought we would share with you a summary of our total fuel consumption towing, driving different roads and different tyre pressures throughout our Outback trip in May 2021. The below table provides you with a summary of our kilometres travelled, where we filled up with fuel, total litres used, litres used from jerry cans, cost of fuel and whether we were towing or in the desert. We have also highlighted at the bottom of the table the type of road and our tyre pressures. This was easier to do in Excel and show and screenshot of the table below, you might need to zoom in to see some of the detail.
In summary our average fuel consumption towing on bitumen and gravel roads across 4,384kms was 17.57 litres per 100kms. Our average fuel consumption in the desert across 541kms was 19.12 litres per 100kms. The total cost of fuel for our trip was $1,325.33 for a total of 873.654 litres of fuel across 4,925kms leaving and returning to the Sunshine Coast. The most expensive fuel was again at Innamincka at $1.90 per litre. Our best fuel consumption while towing was 15.41 litres per 100kms, and this was all bitumen driving. Remember that we are towing a 1.6 tonne camper trailer not a heavy caravan.
Total Fuel Consumption – 17.74 litres / 100kms
Distance Travelled – 4,925 kms
Total Fuel Used – 873.654 litres
Total Cost of Fuel – $1,325.33
Hopefully, the above data helps you plan your trip to the Simpson Desert and work out how much fuel you need to carry based on your planned Simpson Desert route. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know below this post as we have lots of notes and data from our trips that might be of use to you. For more posts on the Outback to help with your planning you can read them here.
To keep up to date on future posts join the 4WD Adventurer community here. Follow us on Instagram for more regular updates. We hope you have found our post on our fuel consumption in the Simpson Desert in our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser helpful. Thanks for reading legends.
The thoughts of Peter.
14/08/2021 @ 5:21 PM
I have been reading your story on crossing the Simpson Desert in 2021. Why did you delete the Hema Explorer? My husband and I are thinking of purchasing the Hema HX-2 GPS, but was interested in your comment about cancelling the Hema app.
14/08/2021 @ 11:31 PM
Hi Jenny
Thanks for reading our stories. Hope they have been helpful.
In regards to Hema, we were using the old Hema Explorer app on our iPad and we started having loads of issues with it. The app constantly crashed, even with downloaded maps it wasn’t working, and support from Hema was terrible. They also stopped updating the app. I can’t say anything on their physical GPS units but I have heard others complain about the older unit with updates. But we don’t have any experience with their units.
We chose to go with an app on our iPad for the cost and easier to plan on our couch and around the fire. We changed to the ExplorOz Traveller app and we are so glad we changed. Overall it’s a far superior app compared to Hema Explorer. Features and functionality are just better. It is extremely easy to use, create routes, download maps and comments, as well as having an amazing zoom and resolution. We will do a detailed post on the ExplorOz Traveller app but we just wanted to do a bit more testing first.
Hope that helps. If you have any more questions let me know.
Cheers,
Peter