If I could increase my mileage by just a few (+2mpg) without spending an arm load of $$ I would be happy with. It runs great, no issues except the radiator leak that was fixed right after I bought it.

 

If you ask me...a couple mpgs is great..being reliable and getting to my desitination when traveling is way more important

 

Just pump the tires to the max PSI, keep it on the highway.

Thats about the only "cheap" option.

 

I have a stock 08 Job 1 crew cab F-250 with 6 inch lift on 35 inch mud terrains with 3:73 gears.

Truck gets 10.5 driving in city

Truck gets 14 on highway with no load babying it

Truck gets I0.5 pulling flat bed trailer with quads 3.5K lbs at 70 mph

Truck gets 6 mpg pulling lifted 38.5 ft toy hauler 15K lbs at 65 mph

I love my truck but wish it got better mileage. Pisses me off when fueling up and Dirty Max owners with similiar set up and load get 9-10 mpg. They average about 85 miles more per tank. Divide 85 by my 6 mpg and equals 14 gallons. 14 gallons x $4.00 per gallon equals $56.00 per tank.

Not sure how true Dirty Max owners claims are. They claim that mileage hand calculated. I want to hook my toy hauler onto their truck for a dune trip and see what the mileage trully is.

Was camping last month and asked a guy pulling a 40 ft fusion with a semi, what his mileage was. He asked me if I wanted to include idle time. I said sure, his response was 7-8 mpg. He was amazed at how frequent I change fuel filters 10K and oil at 4K.

I didn't buy truck for mileage but don't like hearing others get better mileage

 

Is you're truck tuned / deleted?
There are certain years of trucks that get better mileage than others. A guy I work with just bought a new duramax DRW truck a few months back, and it gets 15 MPG highway consistently, and he hasn't had a chance to hook anything up to it yet.

You're lift isn't helping any, and most likely you have offroad tires which also are going to suck down fuel also.

 

Sorry forgot to mention truck is all stock and yes mud terrain tires. Dirty Max guys have same lift and tires as well

 

Well first of all, the DMAX is a lighter truck, so all else being equal, you will never see the exact same fuel economy.
I find that the odd duramax guy seems to think he is getting 23 MPG with 37" tires, I call BS. Maybe off the lie o meter.

The ford 6.7 seems to do really good against the dmax, as far as MPG is concerned.
The 6.4 was designed to use lots of EGR instead of DEF, so mileage is generally lower. The 6.7 also is a generation ahead of the 6.4 in terms of DPF technology. Not that the DPF is any better, but the trucks seem to be better at cleaning without massive fuel use like the 6.4.
EGR on a diesel causes soot, so the 6.7 using less EGR should also need less regens, or less intense regens.

At the end of the day, the 6.4 diesel was the first ford diesel to use DPF technology, and MPG was an issue from the get go.
The cummins that used lots of EGR didn't do good either. Maybe even worse.

 

My guess is you have a number of things, which added together, are working against you mileage wise. Your lift, your tires, and your gears.


I drive an '08 F450 that weighs 9,400 Lbs on the scale with a full bag of diesel and me, and nothing else. It's a fat pig. Add in the wife, kids, dogs, related stuff and I'm scaling well north of 26K combined.

On a longish trip unloaded in relatively flat terrain I can hit 16.5 mpgs or so. My camper weighs in at 16.5 - 17K depending on how it's loaded and I usually average about 8.5 with that. Hit a high once of 10.5. I can haul almost as much weight combined on my gooseneck and get 12.5-13.5. Factory tire size and stock 4.30 gears.

This is not stellar fuel mileage by any stretch, but considering what I'm driving and what I tend to haul, I don't consider that too bad.


You should be capable of much better mileage than you are getting, but as I said, you've a number of things working against you, not the least of which are those gears and tires.

 

My personal preference is the 210 tow tune, late lockup. It is a very well behaved and streetable tune. For me, anything above it starts to get too twitchy on the throttle and I don't like that.

After reading some raves about the 310 tune I loaded it up and went for a ride. It seems to work the turbo more than normal, IE lots of boost under some relatively light load conditions, and it has that touchy throttle I don't care for.

Before the weekend is out I'll load my 210 tow tune back up and call it a day. Been running that as my daily pretty much since I bought the tuner and haven't found another tune in the package I like as well for all-around use. It's got good power, it comes on smooth and predictable, the boost comes on smooth and predictable, and there is none of that twitchy throttle response I don't like. If you're the type that feels the need to "roll some coal dude!", you won't like it. Smoke is minimal, even when you get on it.

Tranny shifting can be somewhat harsh depending on your load and how you're driving, but Spartan swears that harsh though it feels, it's better for the tranny if you drive it hard or tow with it. Drive it hard I don't, tow with it I do, so I'm all in. Plus you get used to it.

There is a straight 210 tune minus the tranny shift mods if you want it.

The 210 tunes are also the highest you can run where the egr is disabled, but periodically cycled to make sure it doesn't end up sticking shut. Pull up to a stop light and it will open up for 3 or 4 seconds (guesstimate), and then close. It does not open up when you are actually driving, only when stopped. All the tunes above it close it and leave it there.

When checking for mileage pay no attention what-so-ever to the mile-o-meter on your display. After loading up your tune it will be totally unreliable. You will have to do your checking the old fashioned way.

Have fun on your trip....

 

The first 50K miles or so was a love fest with this truck. Stock turbo lag was easily cured by spartan tunes. I kept it tuned with DPF and CAT delete until about 60k miles. The truck had to go in for cracked cooler pipes. Since I got the truck back it hasn't been the same. Worse fuel mileage than usual, higher egts, lower power. Then the death wobble started. After tracing it to the track bar (not initially) as the culprit I was beginning to lose hope. I think I have another cooler leak, or a jammed up egr.... Either way I am not looking forward to another trip back to the dealer.

This truck definitely likes the open road, or pretty much anywhere off of Long Island NY. I tow a lot, and also do some plowing. She's pretty but she works hard, she just never gets a chance with all of the traffic around here to actually get moving. It takes me 30 mins to get to work in the morning and that's 8 miles away.

Maybe the 6.7 will suit me better, who knows anymore.

 

I'll probably get some grief over this one but....given a choice I'll never take my diesel trucks back to the dealer for engine work. It has never worked out. The trucks have NEVER come back properly repaired. Last straw was a 6.0 failure we had. Truck came back with components still defective that should have been replaced, stuff disconnected that should not have been, loose clamps, connections, etc. Complete train wreck of a repair. It was simply the worst of a number of jobs not done right.

The major issue was we determined we had some bad injectors. I hauled it 650 miles to the people at powerstrokehelp.com. They diagnosed the injectors with the truck still on my trailer with me watching and explained the process and the problems.

Gave them the go ahead for the injectors, having the heads reconditioned while we were at it, arps, egr delete, tuner, etc etc. The bulk of the stuff in their "bullet proof" package.

When it was all done there was not a screw out of place. Absolutely no sign that they had the truck/engine tore apart, other than it ran better than it had ever run.

It was not cheap, but I know much cheaper than the dealer would have done the work.

Within months we popped a head gasket, but weren't really aware of it. Thought it was a different problem. Months later it was back at powerstroke where they fixed under warranty with no grief.

This time around, and this was a bust on their part because they didn't get the ok ahead of time for additional cost, they o-ringed the heads and guaranteed we'd never blow them again. Additional cost was $800.00, which they said they'd eat because their man forget to get the go ahead on the money before doing the work.

I paid them anyway. They were honest, competent, and didn't try to weasel their way into that 800 bucks.

I know they know diesel trucks. When I go to the dealer I don't know WHO is working on my truck, and performance so far has been demonstrably sub-par. EVERY dealer I've had to use. That's not to say there are not good dealer diesel techs out there, I'm sure there are, but I'm not sure I'm going to get one of them when I go and the dollars involved are too much to risk.

I've had two trucks repaired at powerstroke and have been happy with the results on both. I cannot say the same for my local (and non) dealers.

 

I thought all the tunes bigger than 200 were all EGR disable ?

 

I thought o-rings for heads are only for racing, not longevity?
Don't they fail quickly with daily driving?

 

Last week I drove from Magnolia, TX to San Antonio, 227 miles each way and when I got back, I still had enough fuel to drive nearly a 100 miles in town the next day before my fuel minder got down to about 20 miles til empty and I filled up. So just rough numbers... 554 miles on less than 30.5 gallons is pushing 18+ mpg. DPF delete, EGR's disabled, 37" Toyo MT's, 2.5" leveling kit. 63,500 miles on the ticker.

 

avg speed?