I used my truck for the first time this weekend. We had to go pick up all our stuff from the dear lease this weekend. I picked up a 30ft (25'+5' dovetail) gooseneck from my cousins company on Friday. If you cant tell from the picture, it has dual tandem axles and is 102" wide. We drove to the lease on Saturday, picked everything up and then headed back. The trailer weighs 7200lbs dry. It was loaded as shown below in the picture. I figure the bronco weighs ~5000lbs and the stand weighs maybe 500lbs. That makes for ~13,000lbs. The trip was ~150 miles each way.

The truck has amsoil filter(removed stock box), straight pipe, 295x75 tires, and Superchips tuner mentioned below. Other then that, truck is stock.

Let me start off with pulling the empty trailer. I changed the tune to Tow-Safe. I am pretty sure that this tune just changes when the fuel comes on and how much. So not much timing added if any. The truck did not struggle at all to pull it at speed. I could pull the trailer no problem at 70mph hills or no hills. I tried to keep it around 65mph plus or minus a few and averaged ~12-13 mpg. EGTs would hit ~1000*F on hills or under hard acceleration, but otherwise werent too bad. Boost was a constant 10-15psi on the highway.

Once loaded, truck was still able to maintain speed while on level ground. would drop a few miles per hour on slight hills and on the longer hills it would drop to ~55 mph. I drove it from Crockett to Palestine with the Tow-Safe tune, but decided to return it to stock once in Palestine. I could hit 1200*F no problem on hills and when trying to speed up. Boost was pretty much 15+ on everything but the downhills trying to maintain 65 mph. After detuning the truck, EGTs stayed below 1000* unless a LONG hill at which point they would climb to ~1100*. The only bad part was that I got ~7-9mpg on the trip back.

Now to the questions...
Is this normal? I have never towed with it and never towed this much weight with anything. There is a ton of wind resistance due to the deer stand like it was. Deck of trailer was around 4' and the stand is abouit 7.5' tall for a combined height of ~11.5'. Loaded any other way would damage it.

Is there any way to improve milage while towing aside from just putting along? I have thought about getting RV275s. Would this help?

 

Everything appears pretty normal to me. I have two trailers like yours (25' and 45'). With my 3500 DRW Cummins 6spd, (always run Superchips on tow mode only), 4" dual exhaust (no cat), Cold Air Intake - the only improvement you can make is by keeping your foot out of the pedal. I see a 2-3 MPG difference between running 1900 RPM @ 62MPH VS 2300 RPM @ 67MPH. Once one starts humping along with a loaded trailer with drag @ 70MPH it all "goes south".

 

This is the only time i wished i had lower gears(4.11s), but i dont tow enough for them to be worth it.

It was late and i wanted to get home so i was more interested in getting there then a couple miles per gallon.

Thanks for the response...

 

If you put Rv275 you should see a small mpg increase fully loaded and a good 2mpg empty
Have you tried to tow in 5th gear, instead of O/D ? It might make a difference.

 

yes... i did use 5th for a while, but IIRC 65 in 5th is somewhere near 2500 rpms...

 

Everything sound normal. 55-60 is the sweet spot for mileage, if you can afford the time. Exhaust temps stay lower too!

 

How did you get the 500# deer stand on the trailer? Nice trailer & Bronco too btw!

 

we tipped it over and loaded it onto a flatbed car hauler. the deck was maybe 1' tall. then when we were ready to put it on the gooseneck, we backed the car hauler onto the GN with my cousins dually. tied the stand to the neck of the GN and drove out from underneath it.


at home, we tied it to a immobile object (my old truck) and i drove the trailer out from under it. it made a hell of alot of noise at 12am...