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First long tow with my new truck and I didn't pay much attention to it, just set the cruise and go. The only time I paid attention was when the actual numeric reading shoed above the gauge. I assume FORD does this to grab your attention. The highest I saw was 216* the gauge was still reading in the middle (I know its not accurate), but I come from a 6.0 so I'm used to monitoring everything. My 5er was right around 14.5K on that trip. I'm hoping what happened to me was normal as I didn't see that on a trip I took unloaded and for the record I haven't had time to read the owners manual yet.
My '18 F450 regularly stays around 230-238° while towing our 5th wheel (33k combined weight). I'm in Colorado so lots of mountains. See similar temps running down I80 and I70 headed east however. The worst was actually headed west on I76 from Nebraska, the oil and transmission temps were stuck in the low 240s doing 75 up the very gradual climb.
65 MPH towing 4,500 lb. boat, bed filled with gear for 5, and 5 passengers, 97 degrees in FL (flat) 199 degrees trans temp. Motor oil temp 207 degrees.
My '18 F450 regularly stays around 230-238° while towing our 5th wheel (33k combined weight). I'm in Colorado so lots of mountains. See similar temps running down I80 and I70 headed east however. The worst was actually headed west on I76 from Nebraska, the oil and transmission temps were stuck in the low 240s doing 75 up the very gradual climb.
This is similar to my experience. Towing in the mountains stresses the system for sure. When my transmission hits 240° F I'm going to start looking for some place to pull off and let it cool down.
My '18 F450 regularly stays around 230-238° while towing our 5th wheel (33k combined weight). I'm in Colorado so lots of mountains. See similar temps running down I80 and I70 headed east however. The worst was actually headed west on I76 from Nebraska, the oil and transmission temps were stuck in the low 240s doing 75 up the very gradual climb.
Originally Posted by HRTKD
This is similar to my experience. Towing in the mountains stresses the system for sure. When my transmission hits 240° F I'm going to start looking for some place to pull off and let it cool down.
Hey guys...so when you are seeing temps that high what is the exterior temp? Are we talking summer temps over 95 degrees?
I’m headed to Utah through Colorado next summer towing my 11,500 lb TT and trying to figure out what to expect.
I just did a trip from Houston to Jackson Hole towing my 5th wheel. With outside temps in the low 100s from Amarillo thru Grand Junction my temps only got as high as the 220s.
While it seems that ambient temps would have a lot to do with what the gauges come up with--on my '17, have seen the temp numbers show up climbing grades at 65d and at 100d and the ambient temp doesn't seem to make much difference--what does seem to make the diff is if I let the truck stay in 6th too long--downshifting to 5th takes the temps right back down.
I tried downshifting once, because I saw it work with my 1/2 ton truck. It didn't seem to help much on my F-350. I'm not saying it won't help, just that my one experiment didn't yield very good results.
Moving at speeds over 45 MPH seems to help also. The passive air flow helps. When I was coming up to the Eisenhower tunnel from the west side a couple weeks ago the traffic was heavy and slow, less than 20 MPH. It seemed like the temps were higher in that situation.