I have an 07 f150 4x4 fx. I put a new 5.4l engine in it and I’m only getting around 14 mpg. Is anybody found anything that actually raises their mpg. Truck is stock, so an exhaust system or better air filter?

 

Don’t bother running in circles. If it was that easy, Ford would have spent the cash at the assembly line to rake up all those juicy CAFE points back then.

14 probably isn’t too bad for that truck, especially if you do quite a bit of city driving. Otherwise, just maintain it.

 

'07 Scab 5.4 3v. If I drive a lot of city or urban driving, stop and go, etc, I see about 15, 16 max. If I drive further with no stop and goes, like to visit family in SW Va., or say running up the Harrisonburg, avoiding interstate, running Rt 11, or 340, at the limit 55 I can get 20-21, but I treat it like a game. Getting the weight moving from a stop kills mileage. I do have a Super Chips Flash-Paq 1865, use the 87octane Perf w/ 6K Tow Tune (Mike said +25 hp and +28 ftlbs of torque at the wheels, I know it doesn't hunt OD-3rd and it did feel spunkier, I've updated a time or two, but been on it since 2010) and I saw a solid 2 mpg increase with it. I used to drive it over 500 miles one way to visit same family in Alabama, and it's been north of Indy. It got it then too. Key is anticipate slow downs, don't crush that egg under your foot, don't try to always lead the pack. 65 is a sweat spot.

 

Thank you for your reply, I will look into that chip.

 

Nothing really works.

The best mileage will be on the freeway, for several hours of extended driving. Long road trips. Where you keep it at 55 mph. With highway tread tires. And the truck has to be completely empty.

 

Its not a chip the company name is Super Chips, its a tuner, with a few canned tunes in it, at $4-500.
If thats city, its really good, stock tires? my 2wd gets between 12.8-14.3 city,(ac/no ac),

 

Not a "chip" but is a hand held tuner with canned tunes. Was a hair over $300 in 2009 as I recall, bought it at Mike Troyer's shop in Covington, not a long drive from here. Truck has had new tires, but always were the same size, exact tire as the Perelli Scorpions that came on it, 3.55 gears, always had a bed cover, and a 3"SI, 2-1/2 DO exhaust, and I lowered it a couple inches in 2011.

I do use a Scan Gage II in it most of the time, and I watch the Instant MPG readout (it has several readouts and one can program it for up to 24 that can be chosen to read 4 at a time) keeping it as high as I can (like I did with a vacuum gage in older vehicles). It will "train a person". The SG-II reacts up and down just the same as a vacuum gage, it knows miles, it knows speed, it knows time, it knows fuel rate. I know from using both my radar when I was a Trooper, and from my GPS, that my speedometer and odometer are pretty well "spot on" (maybe a mph off, but no more). I can do the arithmetic and compute MPG at fill-ups as well, and it seems the Scan Gage II with it's Average MPG readout is always within a couple tenths of my calculations.

I have SG-II cords in 4 vehicles with OBD-II terminals, plus a spare. My '77 has a vacuum gage, the '19 Forester has a MPG graph showing instant MPG and a readout showing it's average MPG. It is like a game.

Back in 1981, I was a still a young Trooper, I still had my first issue car, a 1978 Plymouth with 440, and my Dept ran us all through a new training program. Gas was high, for the time, and our cars used it at a high rate. They would have us gather two at a time with an instructor in a '78 (not mine, but was like mine) that had a device (was a box on the dash, it had a flow meter connected and it read speed off of a cable, I guess it had an internal clock) that was calibrated for instant MPG as well as it averaged MPG. We took turns, but it impressed me how every time I used the brakes, MPG suffered as brakes were killing energy that was still needed to get from here to there. You paid the tab when you reclaimed the speed. I learned was a value to anticipate.

 

Whatever happened to Mike Troyer?

 

My 4.6L 4x4 F-150 gets up to 18-19 mpg on highway if kept at or below 65 mph. About 15 if over 65.
In city driving I feel like it has holes drilled in the gas tank. Single digits mpg are normal if in city traffic.
Expectations that a full sized 4x4 with a V-8 will get better than that are not realistic.

My '92 F-150 4x4 with 4.9L 6 cylinder got 14 mpg highway.
My '73 K-20 4x4 with 350/350 got 12 mpg on a good day.

Part of the real life of driving a truck...

 

Also make sure your tires are aired up properly, even 5lbs low can drag fuel economy down a lot more than you'd imagine, jack it up and see if you can spin the wheels freely, binding brakes will eat economy and check the wheel alignment, if that's off it all adds up, a new air filter wouldn't hurt, skip those oil bath types and just put an oem panel back in, cold air intake is garbage, does nothing but make the engine noise louder. Chip will help as mentioned.

 

X2, especially tires and pressures.