simoniz .... Glad to see you are still a RAM man! How did the MEGA treat you over the years?

P.S. .. Pretty sure I helped you get into that MEGA

I traded down to a HEMI 1500 and tow the same hills with my dads 26' Roo Bumper Pull TT. The TT weighs in at 6,000 pounds dry and with all of our hunting/camping gear I'd say around 7,500-8,000 easy. The White PIG gets 8 to 8.5 MPG... Granted I lock her in 2nd Gear at 60 MPH on the BIG hills but she does great IMHO. The new 6.7L needs some miles on her before she will be getting her MPG's up. If you are going to be towing 3 times a month I would def-go for some deeper gears! Slowing down will increase MPG's faster than any MODs...

Take Care! JB

 

You did bud lol... Mega-Cab treated me good. I'm getting happier the more I drive it.

 

Good Deal! It's funny because I'm looking for a MEGA with the 5.9l right now ...

I should have kept my last 06-G56 .... Had a GOLD MINE and didn't know it

 

Regearing will not solve your poor MPG issue when loaded. My truck has the G65 & 3:42 gears. It pulls great grossing around 35,000 LBS. I keep my speed around 63 MPH (1650 RPM's) & I average 11-11.5 MPG's. Before I deleted it I averaged 9 MPG's loaded.

You need to tune, delete & keep your speed down while loaded.

 

C'mon, man. I mean...really.

 

The facts are... Fords are not known for dependability and longevity (the diesel).

We Dodge boys will take a slight performance hit with the thinking that we have simpler engine that tends to be easier to deal with.

 

I would not pass judgement on your truck or change anything until you rack up some more miles. At 4868 miles, your 6.7 is very far from broken in. Don't baby that Cummins, let it eat.

 

I just did that route, from Jacksonville, NC to Gilbert WV. My Cyclone 3950 (5th wheel) is 40 feet and I had my RZR XP in the trailer. Truck is in the sig and I tow on the tow setting of the Smarty Jr. I'm used to towing in California/Oregon and the mountains around here are not that bad. Key I found is for out here to tow up to 70 mph on the downhills and then shift down to 5th and let you RPM's get to 1800 to 1900 and hold that. Those RPM's are for my truck its sweet spot. I will admit that my truck was a total pig until I deleted and actually thought about going with the Ford 450. 5th gear until I deleted was absolutely worthless and 4th put me in the 2700 to 2900 range holding 55 mph.

I will ask if you looked at your tire pressure on both your rig and trailer. I do know for a fact that effects the trailer based on my laziness for one trip and couldn't figure out why I was having more difficulty with grades and trailer sway. I keep both truck and trailer at 70 psi.

 

Old thread, but just an observation. 220 transmission temps are pretty hot. Need to slow it down a bit in my opinion.


The 450 cab and chasis with a 6.7 and 4.56 gears is much better equiped to pull heavier loads.

You are comparing it to a truck with a heavier chasis and better gearing so you need to be realistic with the combo.

I'd throw a deeper transmission pan on it and slow down a little. I'd check your equipment if it is swaying a lot. I pull around 12-13K toy haulers and travel trailers (we load them down) a couple times a year off the drop hitch of my truck with 35 inch tires on it and don't have nearly the sway problems. That is with no load leveling hitch, no sway control, tuner turned off, and no airbags. Getting sub 10mpg but no complaints considering the combo.

Travel trailers also are like parachutes so you need to be mindful of wind conditions.

 

The 4th gen's use a 200° thermostat, so 220° is barely full open. The 190° thermostat has a 225° max temp, so the 200° should be around 235°. They are designed to run hot.

The trans probably got hot because it wasn't locking the torque converter.

The big reason you saw what you saw, as mentioned, is the gears. 4.56's offer 22% more rear wheel torque than 3.73's for the same engine output.

The truck swayed becuase you are comparing a pickup suspension to a cab and chassis suspension. Even a C&C 3500 would have been stiffer, for the same ratings.

Are you sure the F450 has the 400/800 motor? I was pretty sure all C&C Furds had the 300/660 motor.

What year is the F450? I also only see 4.10 or 4.30, for the '12 F450 with a 6.7, no 4.56's.

 

Bumping a old thread.
I did end up deleting my truck. Smarty, S&B, Sonnex line booster, and exhaust. I run the Smarty on 3. It does pull my camper better (Cyclone 4100 King 15k empty, with a Polaris XP4 900 and gear. I figure 17k.

I've gave up babying it for fuel mileage. I run 65 to 75mph now. Staying RPM between 1600-2300. I so try to stay around 1800 but I frustrated worrying about it again lol...

This weekend traveling up to Burning Rock I got 8.0mpg hand calculated (9.3 on the avic). Coming home I got 9.3mpg hand calculated (9.3 to 9.9 on the avic). Engine temps stayed most of the time around 204 to 210. On the hills I hit 221 a few times backing off at that point. I ran 6th until I got to the hills. I'd manually drop it back and forth between 5th and 6th. After deleting it does pull better in 6th.

Tranny temps never got higher then 192 degrees.

Anybody else got any updates?

Thanks

 

Simoniz, I am surprised that you feel the Ford actually felt like it had better control of the load over your Ram. I have several friends that went from Ford 350 drw to ram drw And the first thing they coment on is how well the ram handels. As far a fuel milage your dads truck must have a 6.7 powerstroke?? I know first hand how those motors are better on fuel.

I had a 2010 3500 DRW with 3.73 auto and currently have a 2012 3500 DRW max tow package 4.10 gears. both trucks deleted with H&S.

I'm really not impressed with the 4.10's over the 3.73's I could get by locking in 5th with the 3.73's going down interstate. But with 4.10's it needs to be in 6th. Problem there is every darn hill it wants to downshift if I use the cruise control. I even tried H&S's overdrive program with no help.
Now I do tow very heavy 38 to 42K but I cant stand a trans that downshifts before the truck even slows down on a hill.

My next Ram is going to have a manual trans, upgrade the clutch and there isn't a automatic that can touch it.

 

Why would you rather slow down and downshift, than downshift and maintain speed?

I am a manual trans guy, but the ratio's in the 6 speed auto are much better for towing heavy at highway speeds. The 5th gear ratio in the Auto is excellent for heavy towing, where the manual has a much bigger split. For this reason it takes a lot of mods/power on a manual to keep up, or run it at a lot of rpms.

 

Less transmission wear when it just stays in 1 gear. Transmission builds a lot of heat doing unnecessary downshifts. Its just plain annoying to hear and feel a downshift.

My question is why does my transmission have to downshift when its not even slowing down?

The G56 uses 5 gears to get to 1.00 That is good for pulling And 6th gear is about the same as 5th gear auto .73 manual .77 in the auto. And considering the auto wont hold 6th gear anyways, I fail to see the autos advantage. Plus Im getting tired of putting my truck in low range just to pull off the field with the auto.

I shift to low range for 2 reasons. First being 1 gear in the auto as it is, its hard to get the load rolling. Second reason is the torque converter wont lock in first. Even with the max tow package, 4.10 gears and dual trans coolers I can cook the trans. Why because someone had the brilliant idea the transmission doesn't need to lock in first

I don't think the auto in the ram is junk, over all people don't have any problems with them. The only reason my 2012 has a auto is I thought 4.10's would be the answer so I could pull in 6th. If ram could build a trans like in my 2011 superduty I would never buy another manual

 

Between the 4.10's and a 5th that is .82 on the 68RFE (.77 is the C&C ratio) it's a big difference in rear wheel torque from a G56 to a 68RFE.

For slow speed driving there isn't a question, between heat and gearing the manual wins hands down. Cruising at 60-70 the auto has the advantage, especially since it can get 4.10's.

4.10's and a the .63 6th is a final drive of 2.53:1, the G56 with 3.73's has a final drive of 2.76, so the G56 does have a slight advantage in top gear, but again than mid gear 5th at .82 and 4.10s is great for highway pulling.

I really would like my NV5600 to have the .79 6th that the early G56 has, it would greatly improve highway towing.