Just made my first trip towing with my 06 F250 3V. Tires are 285/20's, 4.10 gears. Basically stock truck. New oil filter, air cleaner and cleaned throttle body before the trip. Was towing a 16' flatbed equipment trailer and my 1965 Falcon to Colorado. The truck has 98000 miles (now), towed great and was a workhorse as I expected.

I'm used to the 2V V10 as I used to tow a 5500 lb travel trailer with my 2V E350 and 3.73. gears. We also have a 2v 2002 30' Class C motor home and that engine is awesome too averaging 8 to 8.5 mpg per trip..

I wasn't sure what to expect other than the pressure from my heavy foot brother behind me with his 2012 Dodge Cummins. We live at 2300 ft elevation and ended at 9500 ft in Colorado. I figure the weight between the trailer and car was around 5000 pounds or slightly under.

For the trip my lowest mpg was 8.8 and highest was 11 hand calculated. There were probably 4-5 steep grades at lower elevations where the truck was down to 50 mph. Three times it kicked down and was up to 4000 rpms. I guess I expected it would drop that far in speed. This speed and rpm's only happened on a couple of steep grades at 9600 feet which I wasn't surprised about. The truck usually stayed around 55 and 3200 rpm on most higher elevation climbs.

For the most part I was pretty happy with the trip. The best mileage seemed to be at the 5000 to 7000 elevation. For most of the trip I was running at 65mph but there were sections where I was closer to 70. Lowest mileage was at the lower elevations.

I've wanted to do a tune from Mike's 5 Star and will probably do so next year. What specifically can I expect - just transmission tweaking? I've thought about going to 275 tires when these wear out - will that make any difference? It doesn't sound like headers would make much of a difference for any further performance gains with this engine.

Are these results similar to what others experience when towing?

And, of course the obligatory photos from the trip:

 

Looks good. Surprised it did better at 5000ft+ than it did at lower elevations. Maybe humidity plays a role? I'm not very good at understanding the oxygen and air density affecting an engine.

 

I hear the biggest noticeable change with a 5-star tune on the 3-valve is the throttle response. The fly-by-wire is altered such that you get a much more "normal" throttle out of it

Power-wise, there's not a lot of room left with the 3-valve, and they will stiffen the shifting up a bit. Other than those things that I've only heard about, I have no experience with a 3-valve tune.

My '01 2-valve, with stock exhaust and intake, went from around 10 seconds 0-60 down to 9 seconds, but most of that I believe was the transmission shift modifications.

 

I have the 5 Star 87 performance/tow tune on my 08 3V V10. It was really sluggish stock, but after the tune, the throttle response is very good (my wife even commented on how much power it had when driving it unloaded for a quick errand). Transmission will hold gears longer and downshift quicker. I'm not sure if it gained much HP/TQ, but the perception is that it has more power. 5 Star did a dyno article on tuning a V10 RV that you may search for. That article reported actual HP/TQ gains, which should be comparable to what a pickup would gain.

 

Not the same setup but I went from an 02 V-10 with 4.30's towing a 35ft 9300lb 11.5 ft tall TT. I had the towing tune from 5 star. The combined weight was just under 18k lbs. this setup was unbelievable in how well it performed. Never would drop below 55 even on the steepest of grades! Plenty of power, I never needed to worry about where I wasn't going. I averaged 7.2 towing.

Now I have a 2012 class A with the 3valve V-10 and 5 speed torque shift. I'm very disappointed with the performance of it. It only averages 6.5 not towing. Seems underpowered compared to my X and it's only about 1500lbs more without my toad. You can really tell Ford left a lot on the table with the PCM programming. It just feels like it's not getting full throttle when I floor it when needed. Next year I plan on getting a tune from 5 star to fix the throttle issue. The trans is setup great it shifts perfect in TH and the engine braking is perfect. I really wish the 2V would've gotten the 5 speed, it would've made it a completely different power Train!

 

Yo will never think about the 2V again after you get the 5 Star tune. The drive by wire on the 3V is why you feel it's sluggish. Plus, the stock programming never deviates from 14.7 / 1 air fuel ratio. The tune will fix that also.

Now, that being said, my 2V always got better mpg than my 3V.

 

Yes, that’s what I’m after is the 1-1 throttle performance. I don’t like putting the pedal to the floor and only getting about 70% throttle opening. Not to mention the F53 is speed limited to 75mph. Trying to pass a semi it just falls on its face. Not that I. We’d to do 80 or 90 mph. But it would be nice to know it’s there for whatever reason.

 

Thanks for all the input. I am very intrigued by the 7.3l V8 engine and its specs but I love my V10 motors. I'll definitely look at tuning the current rig first before dropping any $ on a new truck. Just a huge fan of these engines