My wife and I took Blue to Colorado a couple of weeks ago and I thought I'd report on the trip. Overall we used 93.557 gallons over 1,754.3 miles for an average of 18.75 MPG. And the three tanks broke down this way, with all MPG hand-calculated:

1. Skiatook to Trinidad: We drove a mix of state roads at 65 MPH to 80 MPH, plus 30 miles of dirt/gravel roads in NM at 25 - 30 MPH. All was driven without cruise and being gentle on the throttle, and we got 19.32 MPG, which was the best I've ever gotten on the truck, and a pleasant surprise as we'd gone from about 750' in elevation to over 6000'.
2. Trinidad to Limon: This was almost all up and down the mountains, much of which was done in Tow/Haul mode - which worked really well. We took some dirt/gravel roads, which were sometimes wet and sloppy, and ran in 4auto a few times. Got up to 11,000' several times (like St Elmo), and tried Cottonwood pass, but even in 4lo with the diff locked it was going nowhere on the "snice" - snow turned to ice. All driving was done without cruise, and we averaged 20.129 MPG for that 631 miles. A new record!
3. Limon to Skiatook: As of this filling it was time to go home, so I used cruise the whole time. The wind was really strong out of the north, and running 80 MPH across it had the average MPG showing 16.1 on the LoM until we turned south at Salina, so that means the actual MPG was probably about 15. But running with the wind the average came up to 18+ on the LoM and we averaged 17.03 for the tank.

But, not all went perfectly. First, as reported under Weird Noises, it appears the IWE's were trying to engage several times, with one run being for 30 minutes at 75 MPH. (80 MPH actually, but as that would have been illegal I'll say it was only 75. ) And, twice the adaptive cruise kicked off abruptly when passing a truck, in spite of the TSB having already been applied.

So, today I took the truck in for service on the IWE's and the adaptive cruise. But, when I started it up it said "Change oil soon", in spite of it only having been 3,750 miles and 4 months. I checked the oil life and it only had 5% remaining. That's odd since the 3,750 miles were literally all highway, consisting of the trip to Florida and back for 2,000 miles and the trip to Colorado and back. But, the trip to FL was pulling a car-hauler trailer at 75 MPH, and on the trip back Big Blue was on the trailer - still at 75 MPH.

So, did the dealership forget to reset the oil life monitor? Or did running the turbos constantly for 1,000 miles, and getting 9 MPG doing so, reduce the oil's life? And, by the way, the oil was, and will be, Ford's synthetic.

 

First, thanks for posting the trip report. I love reading these...

As for the oil, that's pretty strange. Do you remember what the oil life monitor (OLM) was at when you had your last oil change? The OLM on these engines seems to be in the 7,500-8,000 mile range typically, but driving conditions are a huge contributor. I just changed my oil with 4,8xx miles on it and my OLM was at 29% remaining because I had so much idle time. Towing heavy loads, particularly at that speed, will drop the oil cycle. But I have a hard time believing even under your conditions you'd have used up 95% already.

Hopefully someone that tows a lot can chime in and give us a better idea if towing eats that much into the oil life cycle. If you had around 30-40% life remaining at your last oil change I'd guess they forgot to reset the counter.

 

Did the extended trips and all the elevation changes factor in the reduced oil life?

I tow pretty regularly (5L, fairly light loads, at basically sea level) and I have never gotten below 60% oil life, (when I bother to look at it ) 5K OCI.

 

I hadn't looked at the oil life indicator after the last oil change, so don't know that they reset it. In fact, I had only driven the truck essentially twice - the 2,000 mile towing trip and the 1,750 mile Colorado trip. The service tech at Ford suggested they may have forgotten. So, since it is already there we will have it changed.

 

We've been doing our oil changes on ~~ 6,000 mile intervals. Not a lot of towing. The OLM has been around 35-40 % when we've made our changes. I'm inclined to believe that your OLM did not get reset at the last change.

 

Yes, if 6000 miles is roughly 60% of oil life then that would just about fit. I think I had about 6000 miles on the previous change, and another 3750 miles would just about max out the OLM. And that makes me feel better as I was hoping that hard towing didn't reduce the life that much.

Plus, the fact that the guy at the dealership quickly suggested that as a possibility seems to say he's seen it before. So, I'll need to start checking that to make sure it gets reset each time.

 

That 20 mpg isn't too bad. What brought you to Limon?

 

I-70. Seriously though, we got up that morning in Georgetown, left at 5:30 AM, and hit sunrise and traffic at the same time in Denver at 6:30. So, when things cleared up we headed east at a high rate of speed. And by Limon we thought we would have enough reserve of gas to get home easily on a full tank, so stopped to fill up.

But, as it turned out, the north winds picked up soon thereafter and killed the MPG. In fact, at one point we had a deficit of 20 miles in gas to get home. However, when we turned south with the wind the MPG picked up enough that we got home with the DTE calc saying we had 24 miles more we could go. But, as most know, the DTE calc is holding out about 2 gallons from the equation, so we weren't in any danger, although my wife wasn't sure.

 

Gary, I read your other post about the weird noise. Do you think you had trouble on Cottonwood Pass due to your IWE issue? I haven't had a chance to use my locker yet, so I'm curious about your experience.

 

That's possible, and something I thought about after the guys on here said the noise came from the IWE's. If they weren't engaging, whether because they were damaged or because the system wasn't functioning correctly to bring them in, then that could have been a big cause of the problem on Cottonwood. I didn't get out to see what was spinning, but it would not go anywhere - about like a 2wd truck. And with the rear dif locked it just wanted to walk sideways.

 

GREAT post! I always enjoy a trip report. Glad to hear that the f150's mpg are doing really well.

So, what octane rated fuel you use for the trip?



biz

 

The first leg had 91 octane pure gas in it. The second and third legs used 89 octane ethanol since CO doesn't have pure gas. But, back in Okiehoma it is back to pure gas, although if I'm not towing I'll run 87 octane.