I bought this truck to get good fuel economy and I only get 10 mpg with my camper on 120 mile drives on fairly flat roads. LIGHT FOOT! The rig weighs 11500. The dealer did a TSP for hard starting and I had them change the fuel filter. What would help? I won't do any mods that will void the warranty as I have the worst luck with automobiles. Please help Thanks.

 

Your sig says hauling the camper and pulling the trailer.

That's a big heavy rig. Lots of wind resistance and a lot of weight. 10 MPG may not be that bad.

John

 

clean your converter it helped my milage and is prety undetectable!(as the can is still their)
I pull a 11,000 lb.11 foot tall camper and get 12 to 13 mpg!
Hope this helps!

 

Are you able to take it off and pressure wash it or boil it or what?

 

I think he means to gut it...

 

I believe (clean) means, to gut it out.

 

That mileag sounds about right to me. I pull a 28 foot 8500 lb camper and when I took it on a long trip the first time I ran 70+ mph and netted 10 mpg going, and 9 mpg coming home. I took the same trip again and kept it to 65 MPH max and got 11.4 going and 11.1 coming back. There are a lot of factors that will effect mileage like wind, tire inflation, air filter, fuel filter, driving style, shape and size of load. There are more but these are the majors. BTW my last two trucks ('99 7.3, and '04 6.0) got about 9 - 10 pulling the same trailer. My '86 Ferd gasser got 6 MPG pulling a smaller lighter camper on the same trip.

 

I get 8 mpg hauling the trailer (total gross weight is 21000 lbs) but now I'm at 11500 lbs. the camper has a good slope on it and I was going with the wind. I could have bought a 4x4 for $2000 less, but I wanted the a truck that had the least resistance. Oh well, Thanks for your imput.

 

i just got back from a 1600 mile trip pulling my fifth wheel and got 11 mpg hand calculated. my trailer is 29 foot long and combined weight of 17000 #. i think 11 mpg was pretty good considering about 150 mile of my trip the trans was in second gear and wouldn't shift to third.....

 

Stop and go or fast/slow will hurt mpg also. A longer run may show a bit better but probably you'll end up getting about 10-11.5. I got about 11 on my 04.5 DRW/3.73. A 4.1 will get less.

 

next time I drive it I'm going to drive the heck out of it and see just how much fuel it will use. Then I'm going to fill it and drive no more than 50 mph, at as low of rpm's as possible and see. The thing that make me mad is that right after I got it and drove it home with 600 miles, it got 15 mpg at 50 mph at 2000 rpm. I also was towing my toyota wagon. Man I was in heaven!

 

There's your answer! If you only got 15 MPG at 50 MPH towing a little Toyota wagon, how can you expect more than 10 with your current load? I guess most of us wish our trucks would do better, but there is a penalty for big weight and big wind resistance. If you were driving a 460 Ford gasser you'd be getting about 5 or 6 if you were lucky. Also, the trucks after '04 tend to do worse on mileage than the earlier ones.

John

 

??? hauling 11.5 camper and pulling 24 foot.

Is that a truck camper, ?????? probably weighs more than you think
I weigh 10400 and thats only with a 3k 8.5 TC.

 

YES sorry i was out raceing this weekend!
if you pull it "GUT" it and replace the can. they will most likely never catch on! unless they read this. LOL LOL.

It also does not make the truck loud or anything like that! But it will smoke a little more!

 

What do expect a gasser would get with that load? Nowhere near ten and talk about struggling to get it up to speed. Put another 10,500 miles on her pulling that load and your mileage will improve noticeably. Mild programmer or box, maybe some intake or exhaust work would be my only other suggestion. Guess it just depends on HOW worried you are about warranty.