I'm in!!!!!!

 

No more responses to this. I don't need any trouble.

 

You would probably disappear without a trace and Big Oil would know nothing.

 

This. Is. Awesome.

 

I'm in this camp right here. Sometimes these 7.3Ls are like a woman. It does a lot of mysterious stuff we don't understand... but as tempted as we are to bat somebody down with a "you should know better", it's still OK to ask "Can this be right?"

 

My truck gets a hand calculated 18.5 MPG in mixed driving with about 70% highway and 30% city driving like a normal person. If I was driving very conservatively I am sure I could get 19 or higher MPG's.

Although, the truck is/was in very good running condition with everything working and has a manual transmission running down the road at stock height and stock sized tires.

It is not so rare that someone could and does get this sort of MPG's out of their vehicle, although I agree that simply changing tuners it is very likely the MPG would change that much.

 

Running 285's, refusing to run below 75-80 mph on the interstate, automatic transmission, and a 2" front leveling kit has me never seeing anything above about 16 mpg (hand calculated). I've seen 18 once, but that was before ULSD on stock 265's, before the leveling kit, and I was limiting myself to 70 mph on the interstate.

I was concerned about mileage when I was doing 20K miles per year, but now that I'm down to about 6-8K per year and most of my DD trips are only 3.9 miles from the house to work and back through an extremely hilly neighborhood... fuel economy can no longer be a concern or I'd go somewhere and shoot myself. That said, my rare highway trips are few and far enough between that I'm much happier paying a few dollars more to run the speed I want during the trip.

 

Manual trans is a whole different ball game. But tunes won't do that. But they do make it a lot more fun to drive, and don't really hurt mpg if you don't go nuts.

 

Leaving tomorrow on a 500 mile round trip visit to friends. Will give a heads up on the hand calcs for mpg for the trip when I get back.
Interesting that the lie-o-meter is holding consistent in the 18-18.3 mpg range while still here in the city. It consistently read 11.5-12 mpg prior to the chip.

 

Yeah... it's interesting. Mine says 20 MPG on one tune and 18 on a different tune - but both tunes hand-calculate out to the same economy: 16 MPG average in winter and 17.5 average in summer. Long hauls show entirely different numbers.

 

I don't miss those days!

Thanks to the proximity of NJ / DE and a 38gal tank, I never had to pay over $3.99/gal, even on those summer camping trips into $4.50/gal Lake George upstate NY areas.

 

Got back from 500+ mile round trip. Wanted to ck combined in city and on road mpg so added fuel. Combined mpg in Daily Driver was about 14 mpg.
When I got back from on road, I eye balled the fuel gauge and guesstimated 1/3 tank fuel use on trip home. (Not accurate). Calculated at 23 or so mpg. Not accurate. I'll calc it out once put a few miles on it around town a bit.
Lie-o-meter is now way messed up. Reading 28 or so on the road. It's really gone off the planet. At one point after resetting it, it read 43 mpg.
Is there a place to get a new one or get it fixed so it might be slightly in the realm of reality? I have to smack it sometimes to get it to be on at all.

 

I had mine repaired/gone through by circuitboardmedics. Since then, it is dead on with my Hydra. Within +/- .2 MPG consistently on trips and around town when hand calculating.

 

You are the Man!! NikMike. Thanks for that.
Have to send mine off.
THAT'S why I post here. There are no dumb questions.
Y'all are Awesome.

 

NicMike, did you just tell them you had a Hydra so made adjustments to it to be so accurate?