Recently returned from Northern Michigan and mostly UP camping trip. of Course the Ex has plenty of power even on hills. I spent a pretty penny in the 680 miles I drove. Overall the UP to North Central Indiana I averaged 8.1 MPG pulling 6500#. I run a 2" lift kit and a straight pipe. I had every fluid in the truck changed before the trip. Anyone with similar results, better or worse?

 

I wouldn't really call anything in MI a hill, with the exception of the Zilwaukee bridge on 75. lol But no, I get nowhere near that, but my TT is about 10k# loaded. I get about 7.5 on the MI flat lands with pretty much stock everything.

 

'05 V-10 4X4 EX with Banks headers and Y pipe, 5Star tunes, 4" lift, 35.28" tires and 4.88 gears for an effective 4.39 ratio.
Pulling a '14 Jayco Eagle 338RETS TT, 41' from hitch to rear bumper and weighing 11,000lbs.
I use the 87 Octane Performance tune for trips that are mostly flat and load the 91 Octane Performance tune for trips with mountains. I like the Performance tunes better than the Tow tunes as they will hold onto OD at higher throttle openings under load while climbing. The too aggressive Tow tune downshifting resulted in lower MPGs back when I experimented with them.
On our typical trips which are mostly Interstate Highways from 300 to 700 miles we see from 8 to 9 MPG. My best mileage yet was in July coming home from Niagara Falls, 420 miles and 9.4 MPG.
I track every mile my EX travels and every drop of gas it burns and have noted the improvements my various mods have made over the 30,000+ miles we have towed our two trailers (1st trailer was a 31' 9,500lb TH) with. The single largest improvement in both general performance and towing came from the switch from the stock 3.73 gears to the 4.88s. In totally stock form we logged 6 to 7 MPG pulling the old TH.

 

How did you make the gear switch?

 

With a bunch of wrenches, some sockets, a ratchet, breaker bar and an electric impact gun.


I found a set of complete axles from an '02 EX that had already been setup with the 4.88 gears, they were on ebay and a member here tipped us off to them. I watched the auction end with no bids (was asking $2000) and then contacted the seller and offered $1500 for them. He not only accepted my offer but then dropped the price to $1200 when I told him I would drive out to his place in WI to pick them up, he was happy to not have to deal with palletizing them and dealing with a shipping company. My wife and I then took a nice 2 day driving date and made the 1650 mile round trip to pick them up, he loaded them onto our utility trailer with his Bobcat and we drug them home with our Honda CRV.




It looks like you did better on this tow trip than your earlier trip. https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...eage-test.html

 

For what it's worth, my trip computer is showing an average of 9.5-10mpg for the handful of local trips I've taken since buying the Ex in May. It's an all stock (I know, yawn) V10 with 3.73 gears and tows a 5500lb TT with a full cabin and a rack full of bikes on the roof. We have a lot of short hills in this region that make it hard to keep it in OD very long.

I realize that 9.5-10 in the trip computer probably means 7-9 in real numbers and I plan to gather manually calculated values prior to making performance upgrades to accurately measure improvement. It does tow up the same hills almost twice as fast as my old TV and is rock-solid at 60-65 mph, which makes me care less about the mpg's for now.

 

My wife and I then took a nice 2 day driving date and made the 1650 mile round trip to pick them up, he loaded them onto our utility trailer with his Bobcat and we drug them home with our Honda CRV.


Where do you put a hitch on one of those guys????

 

We had the Curt 2" receiver hitch on the CRV, it had either 3 or 4 mounting points on each side of the rear "frame". Funny, but the best mileage tank I ever got on that car was towing those axles home from WI, 28 MPG all highway.