Ok everyone listen up. My father in law is a Cadilac man. At this time he has a '92 with the digital read out. I have driven this car on the road and it constantly gets 28 mpg at 70 mph.This car is as heavy or heavier then a F-150 Ford pick-up. My question is this? Why won't Ford put a drive train in the F-150 that will get the milage of the Cadilac. I would buy an F-150 in a minute if I could get 28 MPG on the road and 24 in town. The Cadalic has plenty of power at all speeds. Right now I drive a '78 ford pick-up that gets 12 MPG.

 

Trucks will never get car mileage because of aerodynamics, it's that simple.

 

bobb,
I got one word for you; OVERDRIVE
Are you reading the MPG as you are doing 70mph? Or is the 28MPG the average?
Your 12MPG is an average. Are you comparing apples to apples?

Soujar

1978 F150 302/2bbl
Getting better everyday!!!

 

your truck i sheavier, bigger, wider, less arodynamic, bigger engine. get the picture now bobb?

 

Is it me or would common sense answer this question?

 

As others have said, aerodynamics are a big part of the problem - a pickup just has too much frontal area it has to push through the air and that hurts mileage. Another big difference is gearing - the Cadillac is probably geared to turn very low RPMs on the highway (maybe 2.70-ish rear end gears). Also, fuel injection makes a big difference - which the Cadillac has, and your truck doesn't. A new fuel-injected truck can get substantially better mileage - my '01 F150 (4.2L V6) generally gets 18-20mpg, with an all-time low of 17 and an all-time high of 22. I don't like the fact that the front end looks like a Hoover, but I do like the mileage and I think the rounded front is part of the reason.

Actually, the mileage on my F150 is slightly better than it is on my Lincoln Towncar - but the Towncar is 500 pounds heavier & a bit wider, which makes up for the lower height. Well, that and the fact that the Lincoln only runs on 7 cylinders most of the time.

I just looked up a '92 Cadillac Brougham on Carpoint, and it says that it weighs 4,300 pounds without any additional options. If this is true, I'd say that it weighs about as much as a 2wd '78 F150 but not as much as a 4x4. If yours is a 4x4, it'll get worse mileage because of the weight and because of the extra drivetrain loss. My '78 Bronco weighed about 4,800 pounds stock, and I got about 10mpg out of the 351. When I swapped in a built 400, the mileage jumped to about 12mpg - which I was extremely happy with, considering that the new engine made nearly twice the horsepower.

If your '78 is a 4x4, 12mpg really isn't all that bad - and you'll never get 28mpg out of it unless you're dropping it out of an airplane or are using a tow vehicle. However, a new truck would get a bit better because of the rounded front end and the modern fuel-injected engine.

Of course, I'd still rather have a fully-restored '78 - I miss my bronco.

LK

 

throw a two-ton trailer behind the cady and you will quickly see why the milage is so good. the cady is geared for cruising and the truck is more geared for work. Plus aerodynamics plays a big role

 

Shortly after the Great Gas Crunch of the 70's, Cadillac had an engine that could selectively shut down its cylinders for greater fuel enconomy, transforming a V-8 into a 4 cylinder at highway speed. They are reviving this idea once again with some of their new models. I don't know if the Cad in question is a variant of this technology or not, but might explain the unusual mileage. The digital display on my VCR tells me its always 12:00, but it is correct twice a day. I'll bet if you did an old fashioned paper and pencil calculation next time you refuel, the ole' average would slide a little.

 

haha!! Fuel injection doesn't help for squat!!!! I have an 86' F-150 4x4 with a fuel injected 302, and i get about the same gas milage as bobb. like 14 or 15 i think!! Thats why i'm selling my truck for a grand prispoiler, ground effects, etc....). i need better gas milage for school next year. i start college!

 

Well, 15mpg is actually quite a bit better than 12 - that's a 25% improvement, which is really all that could be expected out of a good fuel-injection system. I can imagine that there are probably a lot of people on this site who'd be really happy to get 15mpg.

Heck, I've owned trucks that never even broke into the double-digits, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. That's the price we pay for driving a larger vehicle...

LK

 

Bobb, You could always get a caddy like you mention, cut off the roof behind the front seat and make a truck out of it. Then you would have what you want - a "truck" that gets good fuel mileage.

Winford