How Much MPG do you get? And will this increse mine?
#22
My experience with Ethanol in my former Ford Taurus gave me a 10% mpg decrease...
Dirtydog, I was unaware the tranny and rear end in Dodge RAMs had synthetic already. Interesting. I would not have done an entire tranny flush if I had known that. I read this article a couple years ago in Corvette Enthusiast magazine http://www.royalpurple.com/corvette-enthusiast.html Pretty interesting read. RP was worth 4hp over Mobil1.
AIRRAM was getting 15hp with the intakes he used to sell, and I recall seeing a TrueFlow dyno chart for 9hp on a 4.7L, but I can't seem to find it. This site has a little blurb that is similar: http://www.realtruck.com/true_flow_s...4591P1C1T.html
Dirtydog, I was unaware the tranny and rear end in Dodge RAMs had synthetic already. Interesting. I would not have done an entire tranny flush if I had known that. I read this article a couple years ago in Corvette Enthusiast magazine http://www.royalpurple.com/corvette-enthusiast.html Pretty interesting read. RP was worth 4hp over Mobil1.
AIRRAM was getting 15hp with the intakes he used to sell, and I recall seeing a TrueFlow dyno chart for 9hp on a 4.7L, but I can't seem to find it. This site has a little blurb that is similar: http://www.realtruck.com/true_flow_s...4591P1C1T.html
ATF+4 is fully Synthetic incase you didn't know regardless if it says it on the bottle or not. Valvoline is a good example. It doesn't say it on the bottle, but right in their manual or on their website it says it.
With the Megacab, it should have had 75w-140 Full Synthetic already in there.
Flushes are not a bad thing. My first diff drain and refill was at 5kmi. The tranny will be done at 30kmi because I do lots of heavy pulling. The rear diff should actually be flushed after the first 500-1,000miles which no one ever does! That's the most crucial break-in period for a differential so that is when the most metals are flying around and going through the bearings and contact surfaces. A flush early on removes all of the debris. After the first flush, you should be good for every 15kmi-30kmi depending on towing or not.
If you are talking about E85 in your taurus, that is totally diff. than gasoline w/10% ethanol mix. You WILL get reduced mileage from E85 over a 10% mix or pure gasoline. Again, most are mixed at 7% and ethanol burns 30% faster than gasoline. 7%/30%= 2-3% mileage reduction in gasoline with ethanol blend. So a 300mile tank gets reduced to 291. So the ethanol dropped the ENTIRE tank by 9 miles. That's all. At say 22gallons of gas used...13.6mpg's average to 13.2mpg average. Barely even noticeable.
Last edited by dirtydog; 09-02-2009 at 03:34 PM.
#23
#24
i have to agree with ramhunter on that u want better mpgs. buy a car. I got my mega cab for the interior room and "the get the hell out of my way factor". man she sure is nice. get a tuner and all the other general mods and you might notice a 3 to 4 mpg increase. i ran my bullydog tuner at high performance and ran 93 in it and noticed a 1.5 to 2 mpg gain. plus i have a cai. hope this helps. weighed my mc and she weighs 7100 with a quarter tank of gas and 2 people in it. that was weighed on a big rig scale. oh by the way my mc does have mds.
Last edited by megablacktank; 09-03-2009 at 01:30 PM.
#26
If it was an overheat issue, regardless of the problem. Then Yes i would say it will void your warranty because at that point if you see it as red, they say it's red. Then it must be red or at least that will be their claim and it will be very hard to pursue the issue. I have NOT and will NOT install an e-fan specifically to avoid an issue like that. One less thing to be concerned of or blamed for. Besides, the Mega cab isn't recomended for that type of feature because they are heavier machines and work the engine much harder than it's lighter brothers.
Bottom line...11mpg and 15mpg highway are fair numbers in my eyes and i would expect to get anything more than that. i would argue that LT headers, free flow exhaust and a different cam along with a custom tune would increase power while maintaining your current gas mileage. It's when you get on the gas with those features that your mileage would suffer even more. Which is generally the case...lol Why have the features if your not gonna use them right!? But, all of those would void your warranty.
#29
The MDS system seems to get slated on here, but I've just been on a driving holiday and sat at 63mph on the motorway for over 400 miles on the way up(I filled up at 440miles before the fuel light came on) getting over 25UKMPG or 21US MPG with the MDS switched to 4 cylinders most of the time, I had 2 adults, 2 kids, the dog, 3 bikes plus trailer, tent and camping gear, clothes and food for 10 days hols in the back. Even my average MPG was 17.9 for the whole holiday of nearly 2000miles half of which was spent driving around the winding and mountainous roads of Scotland.