Hi guys, last year I got my license and with it a 2005 3.7l v6 regular cab Ram. The car is phenomenal in almost every way except for mileage. That being around 10 mpgs city(almost no highway). Ive tried every logical step at improving it. Ive ran a cleaning agent from a local shop through it, reduced the weight by around 200lbs by removing anything unnecessary(Tire iron, jack, hitch, etc), maintained tire pressure and swapped out oil filters. I drive as conservative as possible by barely breaking 2k rpms before letting the automatic switch gears, if you understand what i mean. I do plan on swapping out the intake with a CAI. l need to check and see if my family have done any tune ups prior to me driving it.This does have the towing package which I know does switch out the gears for ones with a higher torque band and all. Thanks for your time and assistance guys. I personally dont make much money(Around 3.5k a year, only work 10 hours a week), but I was just curious to see if there is anything I could try that wouldnt break the bank to somehow improve this horrific mileage?

 

1st: just city- stop and go
2nd: that thing has over 2 tons
3rd: the engine is undersized

what do you expect?

drive the truck on the highway and blow it out for a few miles (100 or so) - you will see an improvement.

just see it that way- big engine, very little gas is necessary to do the job- small engine, you have to step full throttle to do the same where the bigger engine is not even close to be pushed. lot of people make the mistake that they think with small engines they safe gas. no- they don't.
it's the torque / rpm relation. and there the V6 is terrible.
this engine is too small for this truck.

Chris

 

I used to have a 4 banger Ranger that, no joke, got worse mileage than my Ram with its 5.7 Hemi. My friend had a v6 Ram and complained about that too. These trucks don't seem like theres much to them but they're still quite heavy.

 

Heavy full size truck + baby 6 = sh!tty mileage

 

I've got an 03 ram 3.7 with a k&n cai and a magnaflow exhaust I get 14 city and 18 highway these 3.7s are pathetic

 

I hear ya'. I had a company assigned Ranger, 4 spd. manual, 2.3L 4 cylinder truck back in the mid '90s that never got better than 14 mpg and that was at 55-65 mph highway driving.

Unfortunately, an UNDERPOWERED vehicle gets worse mileage than an overpowered one and this is the OPs problem as well. The 4.7 does better than the 3.7 and the 5.7 (especially MDS equipped ones) routinely does better than either...