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On your fuel tank you may have to rethink some of it, I found on my 2013 that if my aux tank is empty and my main tank was below half I would get a gas cap open light unlike my past two ford trucks my tank was in. I'm now have a solenoid on the line that goes to the filler pipe and I vent the aux tank through a filter. There was to much extra volume for the vacuum test so it set off a light. The only time the fuel system is sealed is when they do the test the rest of the time it vents through the vapor canister anyway.
I've been pouring over the ways to beat the vacuum test so the truck is happy happy happy. I think you have obviously lived this little technical adventure so I'm definitely going to add in your experience and advise as I go through the build.
I do have a question though since I have your attention. Did your aux tank have a rollover valve? Since I'm using a new OEM tank it will have the stock vent/rollover valves. I'm wondering if that had played a role in your install?
Yes I have a rollover valve so just venting it was no problem.
This is how I taped into my main tank, the smaller fitting was for my vent that I had to cap off. I silver soldered the copper tube to the metal full line.
Just stumbled onto this thread and it brings back to mind some trips that my girlfriend have taken over the past couple of years. The picture of your rig on the pulloff near Moab looked so familiar. We drove into Moab from the north (Grand Junction), following a back road route that a woman in the Grand Junction tourist center recommended...awesome scenery. I thought the red rock in the Moab area couldn't be topped for its beauty until we went to Crater Lake last year...WOW!. On that thrip we also spent a night in Astoria. How about their barking sea lion population...
Keep up the good work on your trip documentations! Next summer I plan to make a trip out west again...hopefully with a slide-in camper in my truck bed.
Thanks!
Hey Jim!
We sure had a great trip to Moab and we would love to go back. I have always wanted to go there and do some serious wheeling but we weren't about to take the kiddos on anything crazy.
Beautiful out there and we would love to go back, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon.
Have a great trip with your setup and be safe driving!
It's towing time again! I hit the road for the holidays to get back to Tennessee and it was a long one!
Quick Summary: Miles: 2591.8 Average MPG:9.35 mpg Average Speed: 68 mph Fuel Used: 91 and 93 octane. No discernible difference in performance between the two. Loaded weight gross: ~15,240 lbs.
Our route took us from Monterey, CA to Needles, CA (on the CA/AZ border) the first night.
Monterey,CA to Needles, CA
Needles, CA to Albuquerque, NM
ABQ, NM to Oklahoma City, OK
OKC, OK to West Memphis, AR
West Memphis, AR to just north of Nashville, TN. Stopped by to check on our rental property.
Final leg to just east of Knoxville, TN! Long trip...
Truck pulled great throughout the trip and had no issues with climbs as usual. I did hit a killer headwind as soon as we got on I-40 leaving CA and it didn't let up until right before ABQ. That really destroyed my mpg's. At one point I was getting 6.8 as I-40 heads directly north in western AZ and I was sure glad to have the auxiliary gas tank. Which brings me to my next point: the extra gas!
This auxiliary gas tank was awesome for this trip, suffice to say. I really enjoyed the flexibility of having it because I could run as far as I liked without having to stop at crappy gas stations. The best part was that when we got somewhere for the night we would unhook and then go out to eat. While out, I would stop and get gas without the trailer to be ready for the next morning of driving. This allowed me to avoid gas stations with the trailer.
Now there were some long stretches of driving and we definitely stopped, but we were able to do so without being forced into a gas station because "we might as well fill up."
I did choose to fill up at one point because we had stopped to get lunch but wanted some road snacks on one of the longer drives. I used the opportunity to test out my flexibility when fueling from the wrong side. Worked great and now I now that if someone blocks the pumps on my fill door side I can pull up to the islands on the trailer blind side or passenger side instead. Nice to have a second option. Pic included! It did happen! My GSP and my lab had no idea why I kept opening the tailgate but no letting them out. Sad puppies...
Wrong side gas filling...nice to have the second option!
Pups disappointed while I fill up.
Fuel door...and yes, I know it's clocked just a hair too fair to the rear. It will drive me crazy from here on out but alas.....
I did mess up when filling up in West Memphis, AR and it's my own stupid fault. I think I was brain dead from driving so much but I didn't get the fuel nozzle in all the way so I shot gas on the bed of the truck. Not a lot but I had to clean it so the dogs would go crazy. Nothing like making extra work for yourself.
Sorry, no interesting pictures from the road, but maybe I'll grab some not the way back next week.
[B][Summary:/B]
This was a purpose driven trip so not a lot of sightseeing and mostly driving as directly as possible to get home for the holidays. The extra gas tank was great and caused no engine problems or dash lights and provided great flexibility for filling up either without the trailer or when I wanted to. I do have to make a correction to my own comment in my auxiliary gas tank thread: the gas transfers over in about 22 min when driving down the road and not 15 min like I stated. I think I failed to account for the truck using gas as it filled in my guesstimate but it still fills just fine when driving long stretches.
Extra note: the 6.2 has broken in officially now that I'm over the 10k mile mark and I've noticed how grumbly the motor is now in the morning when I fire it up. It's almost like it is eager to crush some hills and run down the road cruising.
Thanks for reading and I'll post up a quick video on Youtube shortly with a 10k mile review.
Oh yeah, that impromptu gas stop was also tied in with an oil change which hit right in the middle of the trip and was super inconvenient. Don't do what I did and try to get your oil changed before a trip. Lesson learned!
Hey thanks! I’m currently making my way way back to California from east tN so I will have updates later on with how everything went.
Only 36 or so hours to go with the southern route back to Monterey, CA.
Quick note, overfilling the gas tank from my auxiliary setup does throw a check engine light so the return line really only serves to replace air volume during transfer. DONT OVERFILL FROM AUXILIARY... the truck doesn’t like it.
Left on Saturday morning from Ekron, Ky to Middletown PA. Came back on Tuesday. 1300 miles round trip. Sweat spot seamed to be around 65 MPH where I averaged 16.1 mpg. Above that it started trending down. 65 put me in the 1800 rpm range. Used 4x4 for about 30 minutes when I could feel the rear end trying to step out on me.
This was my longest trip since purchase.
Note to self: riding F250 empty on a long trip is a bad idea without fixodent:-)
Summary:
I'm going to write this one a little differently.
Total seat time for the trip including towing and excursions without the trailer.
Fuel: 87 Octane
Ambient Temps ranged from 15-75 degrees F.
This trip ended up being waaayyyyy longer on the return leg than intended but we were trying to avoid the ice in Abilene, TX so that added a pretty good amount. Our route ended up being the following:
Nashville, TN to-
Texarkana, TX to-
San Antonio to-
Tucson, AZ to-
Twentynine Palms, CA (Hoorah!) to-
Monterey, CA and home.
Standing at the end of my driveway in TN I waited for my dogs to finish their inspection of our property before I loaded them up in the back for the return leg of our trip. I had already filled up the night before and had a good conversation with a guy in a truck identical to mine except for the Powerstroke emblem on the side. He'd asked about me filling the truck in the bed and I'd laid out the mod to him and complimented him on his truck before we parted ways. Now as we were loading up and the dogs were settling in the back I was trying to wrap my brain around the amount of miles we were going to cram in.
As a matter of perspective, I used to make the Oklahoma to TN run about 12 years ago in a 07 Mustang GT that (when I really pushed it) could turn a 16.5 hr trip into about a 14 hour trip. The F150 I subsequently got following my run-in with a OK trooper limited me to 16.5 hours again and I learned to embrace the long drive in a single day, but dreaded it every single time.
Now, I was going to run what I initially thought was 39 hours from middle Tennessee and the heart of country music all the way to the California coast...with a 5 year old, a 3 year old, a pregnant wife, a diabetic dog, a neurotic dog (GSP), and the remaining thread of my sanity. That 39 hour mark was a lot of seat time, but I was sadly mistaken if I thought it was going to stay at that estimate.
In the truck, on the gas and gone.
Looking over the dash at the end of the first days' drive I realized that we had pretty successfully knocked out a good 9 hours on the road and nothing had gotten too out of hand. I've really come to appreciate the comfort of this truck on the long trips and I have especially come to appreciate the adjusting lumbar function. Should I have gotten the massaging seats on the higher trim level and all that that entails? Mmmmm, hard to say. But I can definitely give a nod to those who go that route.
Not the First Time for Bad News in Dallas
I was steady on the gas and my wife was continuing to look at more and more ominous weather reports. Abilene was getting bad ice accumulation and their were news reports of more than one truck and trailer off the road. That crap wasn't going to work.
Earlier this year we had missed a knockout snow storm in the Sierras by hours because through discretion and a prudence which I can credit to more than a couple of rounds overseas I decided that the weather wasn't going to give a damn about what we wanted to do. Now we were driving straight at a similar situation, but ice instead of snow.
We rerouted down to San Antonio in the hopes of warmer weather and to get away from ice. SA turned out to be a nice break and we celebrated the New Years with a river walk and to stand in front of the Alamo. Though my kids won't remember doing that hopefully we can bring them back because when you hear about the Alamo you don't really get the impression of just how small it really is.
On the first day of the year we packed up and pushed south as much as we could and found a "middle of nowhere" campground in route to Tucson, Az which turned out to be right up my alley for its simplicity and for the great views.
Texas was delivering on its promise of ice for sure.
Everything frozen and more than one vehicle on the side of the road as we travelled. Out of respect we don't take pictures of accidents.
Our hook further south didn't get us away from cold temps, but it did get us out of the ice and that was what mattered.
We pulled in to this little campground pretty late in the day considering we started right after breakfast. I ended up breaking a grey tank hose because I foolishly left it out during the night instead of stowing it. That's why we have spares...On the plus side, taking the dogs to the bathroom was accomplished in record time repeatedly.
The truck was definitely getting into a rhythm (if such a thing could be said.) The morning we left this little middle of nowhere campground the truck fired up with a definitive grumble and held it as the heat started to gather under the hood. The merge getting out of that campground was a hard right hand and short, but a solid foot into the gas produced exactly the desired response needed and we pulled into and away from traffic as we pointed still West.
We were headed to Tucson, AZ for the next stop. The initial plan had gone straight out the window after Texarkana so now we figured we'd take a couple of days in Tucson and give the kids a break. They'd done great so far, but it was wearing on them a little. We had enjoyed solid breaks at rest stops and had thus far avoided the jackassery of a gas station stop with the trailer thanks to the new found extended range of the truck.
The Saguaro cactus attempts to sneak up on the F250.
The views out here were amazing and there was practically no one else on the road.
The Saguaro National Park Visitor center in background. Trucks getting pretty dirty at this point.
More poser shots.
Losing the sunlight.
While we were in Tucson we also visited the Pima Aircraft Museum. There's a whole bunch of different airplanes that they have and its definitely worth going to even if you aren't a airplane buff. The size and enormity of some of them were impressive to my kids and even my wife who usually has no interest in such things. No pics! But it DID happen.
From Tucson we punched out and headed towards Twentynine Palms. Of all the places I have most enjoyed having the additional tank, this was one. There isn't much except plain ol' flat ground out that way. Joshua Tree National Park however is really interesting.
They say the Mormons named the Joshua trees after Joshua raising his outstretched hands to the heavens. In some of the trees, you can somewhat see what they were saying.
Surrounded by Joshua trees. If you compare them to something from Dr. Seuss books, I hate to tell you, but you aren't the first one.
I love the desert. I think it has given me a vast appreciation for how much there is to this country and how endless it can seem. Even as we chased the sun at the end of the day we were standing still even though we were running my hard rule of 68 mph. I found myself thinking about a little diner just north of Nelllis Air Force Base that is out in the middle of nowhere. In front of that diner is a late 40's tow-truck with a flying saucer hanging from the tow hook. It is literally the only thing of note in any direction for miles. I laughed thinking about that place as we drove away from Twentynine Palms because I had seen that flying saucer in the dark from a hide site about 3 miles away and could not figure out what in the hell it was. Daylight and an excursion would reveal it and solve that little mystery.
I guess I thought of all that while driving because here I was again in the middle of nowhere and the behind me, hitched to the truck, was the Airstream with its "streamline moderne" style and running lights looking a hell of a lot like that flying saucer.
We finished the trip in just over a week and wayyy over the initial estimate in hours. The truck never missed a beat and I wish I could give you some great nugget about transmission temperature or how it did shifting, but there's isn't much more to tell that you don't already know. I know one thing, after running hard for 9 or so hours and then pulling in to the campground, it sure sounded great as 379 cubic inches burbled and rumbled contentedly while we idled amongst big rig RVs and others to our spot.
I guess I'm getting to the point now in this thread that I don't want to just repeat the same old thing. You know the truck, the engine, the trans, the gears; it's all going to do great pulling the moderate load I ask of it. I'm going to roll into that throttle and it's going to settle in the rear and start pulling away while asking, "what else ya' got?".
This thread I think is going to be not so much about what the truck can do performance wise, though I'll definitely still write that. It is also going to be about what the truck can do and where it can take us and how capably it can do so. It'll be about what opportunities the truck creates. I don't haul fictitious loads of lumber or giant culvert sections on gooseneck trailers everyday. But on occasion, I may ask it to get me and my family across the country and out run nasty weather and be comfortable every minute...while powering through and over any and everything on the way.
She earned a name this trip...I don't normally name vehicles, but this time it just seemed right.
That was a wonderful read before bedtime glad your truck got you safe and sound to your destination, I know you did the spare tank mod, have you thought about the atlas gas tank swap also? Tons of fuel for the road.
You sir, have the patience of a saint. We did a 4 hour trip from as PA to upstate NY with wife and kids and by the time we were there, the sanity rope was razor thin! I couldn't imagine that drive.
But your thread is much more than just a performance on the engine and gears review. You spent more time behind the wheel in a week than most would spend in two months. You're enjoying scenery and doing everything but worrying about the comfort of the truck and diesel problems (DEF issues, water in fuel, ect). Imagine this trip and having some of those common limp mode warnings pop up!
I too agree, that V8 sound as your winding down a day is very nice. At the end of the day, it's nice to just be able to gas it and go, especially loaded down with wife and kids. If I'm out west, I need to get you a beverage for this thread! Cheers!
11-06-2017, 08:06 PM
glad your truck got you safe and sound to your destination, I know you did the spare tank mod, have you thought about the atlas gas tank swap also? Tons of fuel for the road.
