Hi, i am new to these forums, as i drive a 99 mustang, and do not own a dodge truck myself. However my dad does, and its an 02 4 door 4.7 liter i believe, and for his 45th birthday (a little over a month away) me and my sister want to help him out by getting him some better mileage. He is currently getting about 9.5mpg in the city and we have about $500-$700 to spend. I dont know much about getting mpg, as with my car i only go for horsepower, and mpg has never been a concern to me. I was thinking maybe an sct tunner, and a new air intake? Im open to any helpful ideas and am hoping to get him an extra 4-5mpg.

 

bosch platnum duel point plugs adds about 1.5 to 2 mpg to my old 03 4.7... added 1 mpg to my hemi

 

a tonneau cover, exhaust, air intake. lighter tires, thats pricey. but the exhaust and tonneau should help mucho!

 

what kinda stang you got there 02?......

 

I have a 99 v6 stang, im in the process of saving enough cash to drop a built 4.2liter in it.

But about the truck, is a tonneau cover like a roll up vinyl type cover, because he already has one of those. And as far as exhaust is concerned i thought that was just a myth that they helped mileage. Also do plugs really help mileage that much? Im pretty sure the air intake is a definate must, but for that do people reccomend the cheap ebay ones (with mustangs this is what everyone reccomends as they are basically the exact same) or a better more expensive intake such as K&N??

Does anyone reccomend a tuner?
Also is there any matinence that could help mileage?

 

They actually tested out tonneau covers and they gave the worst gas mileage. It was mythbusters actually. The best gas mileage was had with the talegate up and no cover. Followed by talegate down and finally tonneau.

 

Intake, tuner, tune up. Lighter tires, Electric fan, is it a 4x4? depending oon mileage catyletic might be getting clogged.

 

I put a cold air intake on my 5.7 Hemi Durango and I got about 2-3 MPG and I bought it for $75.00 off of ebay, its an off brand but came with a K&N airfilter. It also added some power to it. Hope this helps.

Cuda Guy

 

I thought platinum plugs in the 5.7 hemi was a no-no

 

Mythbusters has had two episodes on this,
the 1st time they did a long highway test with two identical Ford F150s running in convoy on an interstate, one with the tailgate up and one with tailgate down, until one truck ran out of gas. The tailgate up got the better MPG, but by less than 1.

The 2nd time they tested it was with a motor boat fuel flow gauge (Flowscan company) retro-fitted to a Dodge Dakota regular cab. Adam claimed he had spent considerable time 'calibrating' the Flowscan gauge.

The 2nd tests were short on a crowded California highway at 25 and 55 mph, and they tried to read the Flowscan meter by eye to find the MPG, even though the Flowscan will only read to a tenth so that the best they could do was notice differences of about 2% (0.1/5.1 gallons per hour). They did travel up and back that stretch of highway to try to cancel out head and tail winds, but could not cancel out side wind effects. These results with the Dakota & Flowscan meter by Mythbusters reported that tonneau cover and tailgate up were better than either tailgate down or tailgate off. Adam's most controversial finding with his Dakota in this 2nd set of tests was that a plastic net with about 1 inch holes in place of the tailgate seemed to be best of all....but only slightly.

After reporting these results, the Mythbusters said they were
'totally sick of doing MPG tests with pickups'
and did not want to get any more emails or letters on the subject.

You can watch any of the Mythbusters past episodes by downloading files at:

http://www2.digitaldistractions.org:8080/torrents.php?showid=mb