Chrysler announced the specs today for the new 3.6L Pentastar V6 coming to the Ram 1500 and with 305 horsepower and 6,500lbs of towing capacity - it is also the most efficient half ton truck sold in America...along with being one of the least expensive.

Click here for more information!

 

I saw their claim of 25mpg highway. Nice. Now if they could just up the Hemi to that.

Rob

 

I bet the hemi will be 23 or 24 highway. They were saying 20% gain in mileage for the hemi with the 8 speed.

 

And the thing I like is they didn't fill under the hood with a bunch of turbos.

 

This is what I like too. Although I still don't like the idea of having these motors in a truck, its what the market is going to. Trucks are for work and pulling, how many of us bought a truck for fuel economy?

But I will say I still will buy that motor over the ecoboost anyday. Those turbos are going to be a problem!

Could you imagine the capabilities of the pentistar if it had a dual turbo?

 

I've read on some of the problems Ford's been having, but why is everyone so quick to slam Ford for putting turbo's on their EcoBoost? Would you be happier if it was a Super Charger? It's not like no other car manufacture is putting turbo's on a gas engine for a regular production vehicle.

Yes when they fail it will be all kinds of expensive, but same thing when a turbo powering a Cummins or PowerStroke fail or need work..... $$$$

 

Its not so much the turbo that everyone is slamming with Ford, a fair share of us wouldn't mind Chrysler jumping into a aspirated set-up with the Pentistar V6.

Ford however made a (how should I say this) "better lack of judgement" when deciding to utilize a electric pump ILO a hydraulic pump, which in theory helped obtain greater HP. However the electric pumps are now becoming the weakest link matched to the boost from their smaller twin turbo's. Hence the term "Eco-poof."

I'm a Machinist for a company that's been in business of designing and building a variety of 20,000 PSI hydralic pumps for very large diesel engines utilized on ocean freight carriers among many other smaller scale pumps. I personally can't understand Fords engineering decision on this matter.

 

I'm ok with V6s in trucks and I'm one of them that bought one for our business. It's a basic no frills ST. We needed a pickup and the 3.7 has worked out well for us. Its fuel economy is much better around town than my personal hemi equipped truck.

A friend of mine sells Ford trucks and he was telling me the only ecoboost equipped trucks that get anywhere near the claimed gas milage are the stripped down, light as possible, tall rear end trucks (which BTW he said very few buy). He said other than that, the vast majority of ecoboost equipped trucks don't get much better MPG than the 5.4 equipped trucks. I suspect Ram's milage claims to be based on similar lightweight basic trucks. Time will tell after delivery starts.

 

I'm willing to give Ford Credit for the execution of the fecalboost but I don’t understand *WHY* you would substitute 2 turbos for 2 cylinders??? For me it seems like a brilliant solution to a non existent problem becasue I can easily get 22-23MPG at 65MPH in my RCSB and have got as good as 26.5MPG when I was really trying.

 

^ Personally I think the ecoboost decision is mostly marketing spin and apparently a successful one considering how many they sell. As for the why; for the size of the engine it gets you a fair amount of power and supposedly good milage and that combination makes a pretty compelling reason to buy one. Heck, even I was seriously considering one until my friend gave me some insight on to what owners are really getting. Plus I had assumed it was a base engine, not one that you had to shell out big bucks to get. You'd have to drive that puppy for quite a while before you start saving money. Good on Chyrsler for offering a competitive V6 as a base engine with apparently better MPGs than Ford's optional offering.