I'm using my truck in the signature to tow a 7k dry weight travel trailer. I know a lower gear ratio would really help, and I may try to make that happen at some point, but I wanted to hear from anyone else that is using a similar configuration to tow.


With the setup I have, I am getting less than 7 mpg and have a real hard time doing much in overdrive when at 65 mph. I have been using the superchips tow tune, which requires premium fuel but the next time I tow, I'm going to try the 87 octane tune to save some money on fuel hopefully.


I live at 6300 ft in elevation and rarely go down when we camp, but we have a trip planned to the grand canyon this summer and want to make sure I am prepared to the trip.


Any tips, tricks or input is appreciated, thanks!

 

I've got the 3.73's in my Excursion and my trailer is a little heavier than yours and we went to the Grand Canyon last summer and averaged about 8.5 mpg when towing with 7 of us in the cab. I don't run over 55 mph usually but don't have too much time staying in OD except when climbing of course. I run a Performance Tow tune from 5star and they have adjusted my shift points to where I like it so that definitely helps me hold OD. If you are only getting 7 mpg I would first make sure all the maintenance items are squared away (plugs, coils, boots, filters, codes, etc.). Everything I read it seems like the 8.5 - 9 mpg is about the range when towing based on peoples mpg claims.

 

I used to tow our old 31' 9.5k toyhauler with my stock 3.73 gears, it would drop out of OD if I ran over a shadow.
On the same route (I-95 from/to Philly and Savannah GA), going the same speeds (60 to 65 MPH) and pulling the same trailer (above mentioned TH) with the same load I collected this data:
Stock 3.73 gears with 32" tires saw tank MPGs of 6.5 to 7.25.
Upgraded to 4.88 gears with the same 32' tires saw tank MPGs of 8.5 to 9.
With the 4.88 gears the trans did not drop out of OD a single time while cruising on the highway over the entire trip. Between staying OD more and operating at a higher, more efficient RPM range the mileage improved nicely!
I find that having the new gears and not having to coax the motor/trans to play nice makes for a more enjoyable drive.
With our new 11k 41' TT and further upgrades of Banks headers, 35" tires and 5Star tunes (I prefer the performance tunes over the tow tunes for towing) we have been seeing consistent 8 to 9.25 MPG trips. These V-10s really love deeper gears for towing, night and day difference for us!.

 

All maintenance is up to date. I have owned the truck for two years and have put 10k miles on it. In that time, I have done plugs, pcv, fuel filter, cleaned the maf and throttle body. I have new transmission fluid and filter sitting on the bench as well as new differential fluids, but have not had time to change those yet. I have gone back and forth on what to do first (5star or gears). If I do gears, the best way to make it work financially would be for me to install them myself. I was a Ford heavy line mechanic for a few years over a decade ago and rebuilt a large number of differentials so I've done it before, just a long time ago. The 5star would be a much easier to pull off since it wouldn't require me to spend a weekend or two rebuilding the diffs. Thanks for your responses!

 

Gears first, then tune. You need to get your engine to run near it's peak torque when towing.

 

A 7k lb travel trailer is not that close to the max recommended tow weight (around 10k lbs in 00-04 trucks) with 3.73s. The gears are hurting you but the altitude and drag from wind hitting the TT are hurting you more.

I would advise you to get ahold of 5 Star Tuning and get an SCT tuner with some custom tow tunes for your truck in the octane you want to run first. Then regear to at least 4:30s as soon as you can. The change in the shift and tq lockup strategies of the tow tune will help. I run them on my truck and still have 3.37s gears(hope to get rid of the 3.73s and stock LSD soon) Canned tunes that you get with off the shelf tuners like from superchips, suck.

 

My truck is a 2001 F-250 v10 3.73. I just done the SPD Y Pipe. I also have high flow Magna Flow Cat and muffler. Cold Air Intake. I was using a superchips. But just upgraded to the SCT tunes from 5 Star Tuning. Now I didn't get to use the SCT tuner due to getting a defective unit. Now 5 Star and the SCT Tech support went beyond expectations to help me. I am still waiting to get my tuner back.


Now I have a 28' bumper pull camp trailer at 8500gvw. I just went from Pocatello, Id. to Wall, SD. towing. I will say the first day towing was good. I hit some wind and only made in 100 miles before having to fill up again. But once I hit I-90 in Montana I caught a big tail wind. Which allowed me to get up to 80mph at times. I averaged about 10.5mpg that was great. Then after staying the night in Billings, MT.


I left and made it 24 miles before blowing my block heater out and losing all my coolant. Had to be towed back to Billings, MT. Since it was Sunday nobody was available to fix it. I decided to have it taken to the local Ford Dealer. Ford didn't get me going until after noon. When I left it was getting windy. From Billings to Wall I had up to a 35mph head wind the whole day. I averaged 55 mph getting an average of 5.5 mpg. So every 120-150 miles I was filling up.


I was going to install 4.30 ratio gears in my truck, but after some advice on this site I decided to try the SPD Y pipe and 5 Star tuner instead. I think I should have went with gears. But I'll have to wait and see on the return trip in a couple of months when I have my 5 Star tunes.


One thing to check on is your insurance and towing. I checked on mine before I left and was told I had towing on both my truck and camper separate policies. I always thought as long as my trailer was hooked to my truck it would be covered. Anyways my insurance said I had towing on both. When I called road service I told the guy my truck needed towed and I am towing my trailer. He first dispatched one tow company, who in turn called me to make sure he know where I was and how long it would take for him to arrive. I mentioned to him about my trailer. Road service forgot to mention that and he wasn't equipped to tow both. So he called road service to cancel his tow. I then get a call from a female agent wanting to know why I didn't mention the camper to the first guy. Which I did, but he didn't put it down. Anyways 5 hours later I get 2 tow trucks and got taken care of.


My insurance will cover up to 100 miles of towing on my truck, but only 15 miles for my camper. So anything over the 15 miles I had to pay out of pocket. Needless to say my insurance company will be getting a call.


I hope you have a good trip. I thought I covered everything I could for mine but things do happen.

 

I have deeper gears (4.88s but effectively 4.39 due to 35" tires), headers and custom tunes from 5Star. By far the single biggest towing performance increase was from the gears, then the tunes and their awesome trans improvements and then the nice bump in performance from the headers was third.

 

I need to get the trailer weighed when loaded for a trip, but I estimate that by the time I fill it with water, all our gear, kids, wife and the dogs, I'm probably closer to 9k. One nice thing about the grand canyon trip is I won't be hauling water so that should help things.

 

Granted i'm way lower in elevation, but i used to pull a 27 ft 6000 lb travel trailer with a bone stock truck, no i couldn't run over drive often, but the truck just loved it. Now i have a 34ft. 5er loaded with water i'm at 12,200 with gas and firewood in the truck. She'll pull it and i have heavy duty 8800 springs in the rear so she don't even squat. What i don't like is how often she slams to 2nd to pull a hill when i know it doesn't have to. So i ordered the sct x4 from 5 star and have taken my first short trip ran 87 tow up and got 6.8 as opposed to 5.9 stock, love the shift improvements and would run overdrive below 65. For the way home i put 91 in and loaded the 91 tow and holy, wait can't say that ha ha, lets just say im pulling in 91 tow with the beast behind me holds overdrive at 65 70 even! never shifted to second! Mileage was 6.9 but was bucking 20 mph head winds half the way home. I'm going 8 hours to the black hills in two weeks and ill check back in on how it does! Anyone have any tips with the sct? Should i even use the 87 tow tune? or just run 91? Just curious
.

 

I used to tow REAL heavy with a 2006 F350 V-10 and 4.88 cogs. The V-10 needs to rev to make power. With my gear change it would turn 2500 @ 65mph. The gear swap changed the attitude of the truck and was decent to drive, even loaded heavy.





Most of the time I was scaling about 25K to 30K, fuel mileage always around 6.5 mpg.

 

Peak torque is achieved at wide-open throttle, with the computer having vastly different values for fuel and ignition parameters ( compared to your part throttle towing/cruising )… So you definitely do not need peak torque nor peak horsepower.

Besides that: torque is what accelerates you, horsepower is what keeps you cruising. Yes you do need good torque to move a trailer, but what keeps it going down the road without downshifting is horsepower.

With that said: yes you should get gears first. It will be far more increase than a tune well.

 

I had been running the 87 Performance tune from 5Star for all of my towing chores, I had tried the 87 Tow tune but didn't like the shift schedule for my style of tow driving. On a recent trip home to Philly from Charlotte NC (tanked up with real cheap SC 89 Octane ) pulling the 41' 11K TT I tried the 89 Performance tune and WOW! What a noticeable improvement over the 87 Perf tune for towing, and I HAD been thrilled with how good the 87 Perf tune was. It was holding OD on I-81's mountain grades through VA at 70 MPH (2500-ish RPMs) with throttle openings in the high 50% range. We were a little pressed for time due to stopping off to meet a fellow forum member so I was hammering it a little harder than usual and still pulled down 8.25 MPG for the 572 mile run with a moving average speed of 59.9 MPH. ( I love data! ).

 

I have towed a 30' toy hauler with 3.73 and a 4" lift on 35s
Its not the fastest but gets you where you need to be just dont try and drag race everyone at the stop light or you will fry your trans

 

Interesting thread. My X had 3.73's and pulling about the same size trailer, maybe a little more. Debated on whether to go with gears or a tune. Went with 4.30 gear first, it was about $500 total, and of little improvement(stock size tires). Now considering spending the same amount on the tune and y-pipe. Truck has sometimes struggled in the past pulling, so there may be more to the story that I have yet (in 200,000miles) to discover. A diesel is not ever in the cards for me, but there seems to big a fairly large gap in pulling power between the two.