Hi Everyone...

New to the forum, and a new (to me) F350 owner. I've recently bought an 06 F350 6.0 4x4 SRW, and had a question regarding what I can expect for mileage. I've owned it for about 2 months now and had it on a couple trips and am registering between 16-17 MPG. Granted, this is the first diesel that I've owned, but I guess I would have thought that I would get better than that, especially with nothing behind it. I haven't got any mods, other than an Airaid filter, to help with it, and maybe I need to in order to get better mileage. I put additive in the tank at every fill up to help keep it clean, but to be honest haven't noticed a difference. I've got just under 100,000 miles on it. Can anyone tell me what I should be expecting out of a stock 6.0, and if it is substantially higher than where I am at, any ideas as to why I would be getting what I am getting, or what I should do to increase it? Thanks for the help. Looking forward to browsing all the great information on the forum.

 

Your mileage is fairly typical, maybe slightly low. I get 18-19 empty and 12 towing my 12000# fifth wheel. Your Airaid filter is not helping your mileage and may be hurting your engine. The stock filter filter setup has been independently dyno'd and up to 500 plus horsepower flows as well as any aftermarket system and filters better. Putting a tuner on it, like a SCT X3, with custom tunes may help, but it may not. Mileage is a function of so many parameters, especially how it is driven, that any tuner increase would be a bonus. I get about the same as stock when running a street performance tune. I sure do like how it runs though. You do need to do some longevity upgrades though. A coolant filter, a fuel pressure gauge and an Edge Insight Engine Monitor system is a good start. A search here will give you more info than you can read in an evening. Enjoy your new truck

 

My truck also has the Airaid. It was there when I purchased it.

Of course, I don't have the stock one anymore (or the stock air filter box).

Where would be the least expensive place(s) to get what I need to put it back to stock?

 

Thanks for the help. I will look into putting the OEM filter back in it (the stock filter box is still on, so not a big deal), as well as the other recommendations. Your information was exactly what I was looking for.

 

I'm getting 14-15mpg and that's mostly taking it real easy on the highway.
At 8,500 lbs it's about the best we can get.
2WD are 700 lbs lighter and so get 18-20.
If you can cruise at 50 on the hwy you might squeeze a couple more out of it......but who can do that.
The best I can do is by dropping my speed climbing big hills.
My best mileage is when it's parked and I take my 08 Civic - 40+ mpg (3,200lbs).

 

Hello all I might get some skeptics about this but I haul new campers for a living and have a total of 153 gallon capacity. I have a 6 speed manual trans and a couple mods. I use progressive shifting (about 1300 from 1st to 2nd, 1400 from 2nd to 3rd, and so on). When empty I run the edge on extreme (stage 5) and run 58 mph faithfully. If I can leave the cruise off and keep the boost and egt's as low as possible and not let the toy factor get to me and see how fast I can get up the hills, it is nothing for me to get AT LEAST 21mpg. If I happen to have a tailwind, I can get as high as 24.5 - 25.1. If anyone has doubts and has excel on their computer, I have been tracking my info on a spreadsheet and can email it to you. If I get below 20 empty and know that I haven't been running it hard then I know I have a problem. I can use my milege as an indication of the beginning of a problem. However when I get close to home I tend to drive kind of like a maniac. When running hard around town I can be as low as 15mpg. Of course that is blowing black smoke after every stop. I would strongly suggest doing the full egr delete, and cutting out the cat and muffler and putting 4" pipe in place of them and start saving for the stud job. I am also a big fan of the stock air filter. I run about 65k to 75k on them before replacing. I change my oil every 5k and fuel filters every 10k. My last truck was also a 06 6.0. But it was a crew cab dually. That milege was horrible. I put 380k on it before I finally decided I had enough. The duallies had to be special ordered with 3.73 gear ratios. But all srw's have 3.73's(I guess unless they special ordered them different). I thought the 4.10's (or was it 4.11's) would help me pull more weight. how wrong was I. I could go from a stop really fast and outpull everyone, as long as I stayed below about 40 mph. Anything above that and the dually would fall on its face. WOW I got off subject but oh well...I have put about 480k miles behind the wheel of 6.0's since jan 06 and have been a fuel milege junkie. I sometimes get carried away about some subjects. Last thought, I feel the only people that talk smack on the 6.0's either choose not to work on them themselves (thus leaving them at the mercy of the "all knowing" dealerships), or just havent gotten brave enough to tear into it themselves. Ever since I started studying how this engine works and gained a slight understanding of it, I love it.

 

Those #'s are impressive given the weight of the 6.0l- it gives me hope.
My trouble is I don't drive enough (6-8k year) to justify the mods- my payback time would be long after I trade up to my next project.
BUT as i am in Canada and paying $5 a gallon I will try pull my muffler as it's so dammed big it has to be costing me 1+ mpg.
I find that my mileage is improving as a learn the 'feel' of the truck.
As I drive the same loop to work and back ( about 25 miles) I am starting to know how the truck responds.
The biggest challenge is 75% of the time I'm driving an 08 Civic!
One question for you: are you using synthetic oil?
I've heard that it will give the 6.0l a mpg???

 

Negative on the synthetic oil. I understand my numbers might be better if I was but I use this truck and I figure the oil change into my cost per mile. I use motorcraft 1540 and motorcraft filters. If the oil was to stay in my engine for any longer than about 6 days (which is when I accumulate the 5k) then I would definately go synthetic. Especially if you run 25-30km's between shutdowns. I am certain the synthetic is tremendously better for cold starts. However my truck might travel 700-1100 miles between shutdowns. I have the muffler and catalytic converter removed. Not sure on the milege gains due to this cause I have had both trucks this way forever(or at least since I bought the trucks). I would strongly recommend either start saving or just buy a full egr delete kit (I got my last one from sinister diesel for $300 us and am very happy with the quality of the kit). I did mine on the srw before it went out (I thought of it as preventative maintenance, it will go out eventually, so why wait, when mine went out on the last truck it severely darkened my coolant bottle and contaminated the coolant with soot from the exhaust.) However it will trip codes on the pcm, my edge platinum allows me to turn off the cel (however the code stays in the pcm, but I have seen no adverse issues by it being in there in about 400k miles). I would say it only turns on the cel once in every 4 key cycles. Sorry for the long posts, but I get to typing and just run with it.