What's worse are the factories that still polute and aren't up to environmental regualtions. If I have a dirty factory, I can buy credits from a factory that is doing better than the standard and then I don't have to upgrade my equipment.

Yet I remove a cat and my diesel still passes air emissions standards but I've broken the law and I'm now illegal. Go figure!

 

I don't know fruitman... I am a car enthusiast as well, and have a couple classics in the garage in various stages of rebuild. The problem with attacking the old cars, is they start crushing them. And that is a shame. I like my old stuff too. And it has been my experience that true enthusiasts keep their rods as clean running as anything on the road. It becomes REAL hard to distinguish between the two with laws. Unfortunately there are a lot of people that would just as soon see my 56 T-bird and my 68 Camaro RS/SS go to the crusher.

 

72mph will eat up your fuel. Drop to about 1900 rpm and the milage will go up. Also, shift before you hit 2000rpm and it will go up as well. I live in hilly pennsylvania. Get 21-22mpg downhill, 19-20mpg uphill which averages about 20.4 by hand calculation. But I have an 03 with teh double injection event and a 4" exhaust and a cleaned out intake system and high flow filter. The exhaust and air cleaner (and doing somthing to the intake I can tell you about here) yielded about 2.5 more mpg per gallon.

Cummins have a lot of power and boy do they like to run in the 2000 to 2400rpm range but you got to exercise a little control in keeping the rpms down and foot out of it to keep the milage sweet.

 

I have the 05 2500QC CDT w/3:73 rears. the best I have ever got on the highway was 17.5 until recently......I just hit 15000miles and started running Power Service in the Silver bottle. At 70mph I am getting 20.3mpg hand calculated. I have gotten this with the last two full tanks of fuel. I have been commuting 204mile round trips for the last couple of weeks.

 

Once I crossed the 36K mark mileage went up to 18mpg in the city - 21+ on the hwy. With the Banks kit I'm down to the 16's in town (That's got nothing to do with my right foot being glued to the floor!!! wink, wink). Towing 8k+ lbs I'm getting an honest 16.5 at 80mph. If I can keep it at 65-70mph I'm pushing 24mpg. All numbers above are actual - no over-head.

Go take some road trips - break in is loooooooooong. I'm also running syntheitc.

 

Dragginbutt (and others),

Dude,
Sorry for the misunderstanding, I didn't mean to imply that all older vehicles are pollutants. I did mean though that I feel it seems backwards to test new vehicles and not older ones. And as far as street legal racers go, nothing brings out the primitive side of any real man more than the smell and sounds of say a blown Hemi in something like a 60's - 70's series muscle car/truck!

On another note, (and I'm no tree hugger) I agree with BLORD about factories and such, (especially living so close to the Cheasapeake Bay watershed) dumping/pumping endless amounts of toxins only to be fined what to them are considered trivial amounts compared to solving the problems. Yet, we have to feel threatened (by fines/possible jail [yea right]) for removing or altering emission control components (I know, I'm getting close to crossing the DTR moderators line here, sorry) that could possibly help save fuel. But I guess the EPA/Gov. decided "tough nooggies, my great great great grandkids need a place to live too" on this issue and thus we have to either fall in line behind the rest of the herd or be culled.

Well, and too, I'd be lying if I said my new 06' was fast enough for me. So maybe, I should just accept what type of American Male I am. A "More Power" hungry 44 yr old kid at heart, still dreaming one day when I grow up I will be a race car driver. There I said it!



The Fruitman

 

HEY fruitman I am with you on the blown hemi I got a blown hemi,and with 2800 hp still aint enough. But I can only be a race car driver on the weekend, cant afford to go full time my website was in my signature if you wanted to see beginng photos of the hemi I guess they remove your websites even if your not trying to sell something.

 

Ya know, I've been lookin' at a couple of other threads on this fine site and I'm startin' to consider myself one of the lucky ones. I run the 4.10 rear with 4WD and an Automatic! So my numbers ain't lookin' so bad. I still think I can do better with a perfermance cold air intake and exhaust system. But now I'm wondering what's gonna happen when I increase the tire diameter? Back to square one? The stock 265's make me sick every time I look at them. But they're stayin' till they don't work no more. I read on here (elsewhere) others are running 315's on the stock 17" rims (which aren't bad looking).

Any thoughts on this situation. How will a larger diameter tire affect the rpm's/hp/tq, and more importantly, the MPG? Or is there just so much torque 315's wont matter?

The Fruitman

 

The one thing the EPA doesn't get is that in order to have a hi-po engine you must have an extremely efficient engine - meaning it is burning all the fuel you put in it. Problem is that 95% of the world do modifications all wrong. The biggest misconception is the `ole more fuel = more power. The theory behind over-fueling is simple and intices many folks to put 950cfm Demon carbs on relatively stock 5.0's (slight exaggeration but not too far off). Most stock engines run in the neighborhood of 85% efficiency where your race cars (The properly tuned ones) are in the mid 90% range. Simple facts are that you can only spin the engine so fast (before it flys apart) and you can only get so much air in per stroke. Most engines actually gain power when they are leaned out but with a bi-product of heat (enough to melt spark plug electrodes and aluminum pistons). If folks would spend a few hours reading any decent engine performance book instead of scowering the net for the "super" chip and cold-air-intake mfg who has the best looking dyno chart folks would save tons of money, fuel, and possibly back the EPA down a notch or two. But this will hurt the after-market gofast parts mfgs bottom lines. Diesels are really the exception to the rule: more fuel does = more power, to a point. However gassers do NOT work in this way and will suffer greatly from over-fueling.

There is a great book on the market written 20 or so years ago titled "auto math". This is a great starting place to educate yourself on engine building. It's 100 pages of "reality" that will change your whole perspective on engine modding. This is how the engine mfgs do it - they build the engine on paper with a calculator then design the block, etc. It's simple math - force per ignition (ammount of bang everytime the cyl fires). Then it all about getting the air in and out. It's more chemestry concerning mixing fuel & air vs. piston/flame expansion speed/rate.

Sorry for the novel but 97% of your performance related questions wil be answered in 2-3 hrs.