i purchased a spartan tuner back in june of 2010 for my 08, i put it on and immediatly saw 20.5 mpgs hand calculated. ever since that first tank the mpgs have been at 15-16 and thats on flat road from houston to san antonio. the mpgs towing my 6000 work trailer are horrible at 10. i switched from the edge race evo that was getting 17 mpgs empty and 13 towing that same trailer. so my question is are there any other spartan users that have poor mpgs and how to find the problem?

 

Depending on my driving unloaded with the 250 or 275 tune I can do about 17 cruising at 65 mph. Which I am very happy with. Towing my 12k 5th wheel I see between 10 and 11. I use the normal 210 tune. I dont think your numbers are too far off. If you truly saw over 20 hand calced consider yourself lucky. I don t think you will find too many people who ever see over 20 mpg consistently. Then again I could be wrong.
STM

 

and towing mpg is gonna suck.. no matter what.. you are NOT gonna see 15 with a load.. perdiod..

On my dually with 4.10s, towing my enclosed car trailer, 7000lbs loaded.. I get 9 at 70-75mph. thats 50% better than my suburban with the same load on the same roads. ( just towed this on I10 from houston to sanantonio two weeks ago.. got 9)

no tuner yet.. but I doubt I could see 11 towing. (that would be a 22% increase)..
I get 14 empty on the hiway, 12.5 locally..

sam

 

Driving a truck 4.10s vs my 3.55s you probably wont see 11. Also speed play a huge factor I crusie between 60 and 65 mph. I consider 11 to be very good for towing. Towing is towing and like the above post said mpg will suck. It doesnt matter tuner or not. It take a great amount of power (fuel) to get a load moving and keep it at speed. Get into double digits and be happy.
I would love to see the pickup that can do 15mpg under a heavy load. I dont think the truck exists!!

 

i have 355s and when the truck was stock with dpf i was getting 10 with this same trailer. when i went to the edge race evo it ran all day at 13 mpgs towing said trailer. im just failing to accept that with a 1300 dollar chip and a dpf delete i went back to 10 miles per gallon. i talked to the place i got the spartan from and they wanted me to try stuff called optilube, but i have not seen results from that. i also notice that while driving around with very little engine load i see black smoke coming from the tail pipe. im also having a problem with the dashdaq shutting down while driving, which i find very odd! if i cant find out the problem which i know there is, im gona have to sell this and go back to edge.

 

I can get a whopping 7-8 mpgs towing my 5er...I have 3.73's. But I am GCVW of 23K. Right at the limit.

 

senix, when i first got the truck i did no homework and went right to the juice w att. not even hesitating, that was dumb it was worthless. i towed an empty 33 foot gooseneck box trailer from phoenix to sacramento, i kid u not i was at 6.2 hand calc. mpgs and that when my head about came unglued! i paid the uprade to edge and got the dpf/cat delete installed in sac before heeading back to phx. loaded the trailer with 16000 of shop eqipment and hauled it back over the grapevine and averaged 9.5 LOADED. so i have absolutley no idea whats going on with this truck, if i could make a bell housing to put the torqueshift on a 7.3 id b rich!

 

6.2...sounds about like a gasser...I understand. Maybe try going back to stock and re-loading after you verify you programming is ok.

 

ive done that atleast 6 times and when i contacted spartan they were pretty upset that i called then and not the dealer i got it from then proceeded to tell me the programming is never flawed.

 

Blue Oval what tune are you using around town and what tune when towing? The tunes you use will make a big difference on how the truck acts under load and without a load. The only time you should see black smoke is with the 250 and up tunes and you can control the smoke by taking it easy on the gas. The lower tunes can give off a little smoke but it shouldnt happen with normal easy driving.
If I read your last post right, you got 13mpg towing 16,000 lbs??? That is amazing and if accurate I would go back to using whatever you used to get those numbers.
STM

 

no, with 16000 pounds i was getting 9.5 with the edge. now with the spartan im only getting 10.3 with just 6000 pounds. sorry if i wrote that wrong

 

as for the towing around town i dont even check that. most of the mpgs i care about are on the highway. i run on 250 all around mainly cause when i get in the truck i dont have 45 minutes to wait to change the program. ive driving a couple tanks on the 210 with no positive results. i moniter the load and boost like they are the bible and i NEVER get load above 22% and stiil cant baby this to 17 mpgs. im starting to wonder if some people that are seeing 20-21 mpgs are going by the dash. i know theres a lot of people that think i should just be happy with 16 mpgs cause the truck makes tons of power, but im looking for mpgs, i have a 600 horse car if i want to go fast.

 

Blue, you didnt write that wrong I read that wrong (oops) My dash tells me Im getting 21.8 right now. We all know thats way off. I do think with highway driving under 70mph 17-18 is pretty easy to achieve. You may want to try the 275 tune. Runs a little hot on my truck but I did about 400mi trip with it all highway and was just over 18 hand calc. Like I said before towing is towing my 12k 5th wheel I do 11 around 60-65mph. Doesnt matter what tune Im using. Im thinking of just towing on the stock no dpf tune.
Other things to think about. Where do you buy gas?? Ive seen a 1 mpg difference between brands. Which is a lot with a 27gallons of fuel. Also do you have oversized tires and wheels?
Wish I had more help to offer. I ve been very happy with my setup. Have you checked the tune dates on you dashdaq. There were new tunes that came out about 6mo ago (i could be off on the date)
GDLK

 

testing sig

 

If you're towing with a Spartan off-road tune installed, it should be the 210-tow tune that you're running. Don't get me wrong, plenty of people run higher level tunes, but out of an abundance of caution that's probably the smartest and safest thing to do. If you don't have 45 minutes to swap tunes you're sure not going to have the time to sit around and wait for your truck to get fixed when you grenade the motor from running too hot a tune with too heavy a load... There's so many factors that affect MPGs it's really difficult to diagnose your problem in a vacuum, but it's unquestionable that Spartan users are experiencing significant mileage increases of 2-5 MPGs (that's incredible percentage-wise..) with DPF-delete tunes, trailering or otherwise... Good luck, but I definitely wouldn't jump to selling your Spartan just yet...