I am new to the site and for starters I'll tell you I have an 87 dodge w150 with a 318 with duel exhaust(installed before i bought the truck), no cats, 33s, a carter bbd carb which leads me to believe the previous owner swapped the engine a while ago or just the intake and carb (didnt check the numbers on the block yet to see the year). I love my truck but I have been wanting to do a little bit of work to get better than 10 mpg and some power wouldn't hurt either . I was planning to go kind of mild on this since it is my daily driver and im new to engine work so I was going to start off with replacing the cooling fan with an electrical one, replacing the camshaft with an rv camshaft with my old man, and replace the carter since it leaks some fuel from darn near all sides. Any helpful cost lowering hints or tricks would be appreciated. Thanks for reading.

 

i don't think you will gain anything by installing an electric fan other than the truck hitting operating temperature quicker which i doubt is a problem in Florida. rv cam might help. are you sure your speedo is accurate? i know on with my 81 d150 i get 9-13mpg and that is about it.

 

I was goin with the electric cooling fan because I find guys everywhere that swear it helps mpg by 1 or 2 and a small gain in power too. By speedo do you mean speedometer? If so than I think it is within 5 miles of being accurate.

 

that is what i meant by speedo. having an accurate speedo can effect your gas mile calculation since most speedo's are calibrated for stock tire size. i have electric fans installed on my 81 and have not seen an increase in gas mileage and my fans almost never on. might have freed up a tiny bit of power but i don't think its is that noticeable. if you still want to install an electric fan lots of guy like using the dual electric fan setup out of a 96-00 dodge caravan. that is what i used in mine and all i had to do is bolt a couple of pieces of angle iron to the fan assembly and then it pretty much fit perfect to the rad.

 

Ooo I thought I was just dumb or something haha. I thought it was off by more do to the tires but passed a spead trap and was only off by about. Is the duel fan the fan of choice for this? I was going to use a 14inch fan I found on amazon for $20 will that do or will the dual from a later ram work better? How about the rv cam? Does that sound like a good choice? I also read before that some guys said they get better mpg out of an edelbrock 500cfm 4bbl than the stock 2bbl. Can that even be true with more fuel to mix with the added air from the carb?

 

You will not see any noticeable gain of power or mileage with an electric fan. Been there, done that.

10 MPG unfortunately is not that bad for your 4x4. Been there, done that also.

Dollar for dollar headers will give you the best bang for the buck. These trucks engine exhaust, intake, and heads just don't flow very well. A cam will help with power. A 500 to 650 CFM 4 barrel will give more power and possibly better mileage if you can keep your foot out of the gas.

 

Wow so it can help with gas to get a 4bbl. Ok so a new carb with intake of course, plus exhaust manifold and a cam. All sound good? O yea I forgot about the exhaust leak due to the crappy exhaust job so ill need to fix that too. I found the cam for $123 and an edel 4bbl is about $220, not sure how much the intake is or the headers any cheap suggestions? I'm just trying to get a cheap lit of things to do to my truck in the next few months. Btw overall is 16 or 17 mpg a doable goal while within a cheap price range

 

a single14" fan might work. i only have the one fan plugged in on my setup because i never need them or if i do the one does the job great. the only reason i bought the dual electric fan setup because it was only $25 at the local junk yard and i could not find one online that cheap. now i do like having the 2nd fan there just in case i need it as a back-up just in case the one quits and my truck does decide to overheat.

i think the cam would help. i was hoping to install an rv cam in my 81 this summer along with a transmission that has overdrive.

16-17mpg might be possible if you where to do all highway driving with those mods.

 

Is there a trans that would bolt up with od? That would be awesome. I'll touch that one a year or two don the road. Do you know of a decent flow low cost set of headers that would bolt on to my 318?

 

i don't know if you would be able to find an od trans that would just bolt in for a 4x4. i think if you could find the right transmission that would bolt in you would also have to get the correct length drive shafts to go with it and you might also have to move the transfer case back since the overdrive make the transmission longer. i don't know much about headers. i was just planning trying to get the stock manifold and y-pipe possibly breathing a bit better or maybe running duals off the stock setup. i picked up a complete exhaust from y-pipe to tail pipe for $50 and started cutting it up to make duals but have not finished yet.