And i looked through all that page there, and there is no documentation of exact curb weight of the f150 Heavy duty 4x4 ext cab 8' bed. Only thing it even mentions about the heavyduty is:

Heavy Duty Payload Package—Includes:
—GVWR—8200-lbs.
—Axle, rear—5300-lbs. (10.25 ring gear) and 4.10 axle ratio
—GAWR/springs, front—4050-lbs./4050-lbs.
— GAWR/springs, rear—4800-lbs./4900-lbs.
—Frame upgrade (.150” rail thickness)
—Super Engine Cooling
—72 amp-hr-650 CCA battery
—9-channel (18-plate) oil-to-water auxiliary transmission oil cooler
—LT245/70Rx17D BSW all-terrain tires (five)
—17″ x 7.5″ J 7-lug steel wheels

And you cant tell me that all of that is less then the gain of 1' of bed + 80 lbs

 

Pat, you're kill'n me! Stop it ! Please. Go back and please read my posts. Each one, and listen to the words out load as you read them.

I said that a 4x4 screw with a 5.5ft bed was heavier than a 4x4 Scab Flareside. It IS, and by 92lbs. This statement was made in reference to a post PHS70 made, and HE HAS THE 4x4 SCAB FLARESIDE. My advice would be to stop posting for a bit and do some catch'n up.

 

okay im not screaming, but heres the deal. I dont see how adding 1' of length of bed/frame to a truck that is already 92 lbs heavier, is going to make the total curb weight heavier then a truck thats 92 lbs lights, and adding all the accessories of the heavy duty package.

plus not to mention you keep saying flare side. Ford does not offer a 8' bed in flareside. So your figure of 92 lbs heavier isnt even applicable, but ill let it slide just this once. No actually i wont let it slide, check it out. You add 2.5' length, minus 6" of cab, and add all the HeavyDuty package stuff, and you think its still less then adding 1' of bed/frame?

Give me a break....

Im not mad at you, i think you are a cool guy, im just argueing b.c i honestly do not think you are correct

 

Here's a scientific test from Western New England College’s Department of Mechanical Engineering: Tonneau Covers reduced the drag nearly 12% and increased the gas mileage by 1.18 MPG.

Let's take that studies 1.18 MPG improvement with the tonneau, OK?....

So, a $500 cover giving you +1.18 MPG with gas at $2.50 means a 36.7gal tank @ 15 MPG goes from $0.01667/mile to $0.01545/mile @ 16.18 MPG (roughly a penny plus per mile better). That 1.2 cent savings ($0.012) means that you need about 41,600 miles to pay off a $500 cover.

Now, those drag numbers aren't specific to any of our trucks (let alone your setup), but it may be a fair baseline.

As they say with all test results, your mileage may vary!! HA!!!


(See what I did there with the pun?! Genius! )

 

Bro, are you actually reading any of the words that pop up in my posts? This is actually getting comical now. This is almost as funny as shoving nails in my eyes.

Pat, I’ll post this one last frigg’n time:

Paul (aka –PHS79) has this truck :



I have this truck :


This is my Post which you seem to keep skipping (among all the others…)
The above Post was in response to Paul’s post:
I’m trying to share the luv here Pat, so please understand that absolutely NO WHERE did I make any reference to a heavyduty Scab with an 8” bed!

Excuse me while I go pull the nails out…..

PS: still luv ya too Pat.

 

Yes i can be stubborn, and yes i will man up and say i mis-interpreted (not mis-read) who you were directing your enitial comment to (since you didnt quote Paul (aka –PHS79))

 

Yes, I got the pun. You’re a riot! But, I did not purchase my Retrax to improve my gas mileage. I got it to keep the elements out of the bed of the truck when I'm transporting $50,000 worth of home theater gear to a customers home.

Any mileage improvements (and I have seen nearly 20mpg on a drive into downtown Chicago) are a bonus. So saying it would take 41K miles to pay for itself is irrelevant in my case. It paid for itself the first time it rained when I was taking some HT gear to a job.

Just for the record, most soft top tonoues average around the lower $200’s. My Retrax lists for about $900-1000, but I got it directly from Retrax for $695! See a diff thread why it was so much cheaper…

Anyway, nice find.

 

I'll man-up too and keep the digs to myself Now that we have that behind us...

 

wooo beer time you got first round?

 

Me three-I knew he was talking about another truck...

Who's on first?.....

So would somebody get onboard and give me the scoop on Efans?

Have they helped mileage?

 

DAG! Sure.

 

My comment was for the OP, who is considering the MPG gain of adding, among other things, a fold-able bedcover.

 

Geez, I leave for a couple of hours while the sis-in-law was at the house. I come back on-line and get a good laugh, almost as good as the laugh I got from the the fight I saw last night while out for a friends b-day. Seeing 2 grown and drunk men fighting over a bar stool, each one took a swing at the other at the same time, both missed and both of them fell over. Now thats funny...

 

On touching the fold-a-cover, I don’t actually touch the top. I wouldn’t even if it was silver and mirror bright. I have the front panel keyed to my ‘trunk’ signal on my keyless so I pick it up with the little nylon strap to open it, and at the rear I open it by dropping my tailgate and pulling the latch bar. If I had to put my hand on the front panel to use the stock key I would use a longer key… With the regular key you drag your key ring around in a circle to open it.
I prefer touching the fob and lifting.

Wheel size means nothing to tire diameter. Odd thing about the way they do tires/wheels nowadays is they keep the diameter (thus the gearing/emissions) the same when they increase the wheel size. They do that by changing the ratio (series as in 60 series, 40 series) of the sidewall thus the 18 may be exactly the same diameter (gearing) as the 17 or the 20.
Nothing wrong with gearing the 4.10 up a little if you do a lot of freeway. Putting bigger diameter tires can do that. Since you have 4.10 gears I presume you have the 7 lug wheels. Buying 20 inch nice looking 7 lug wheels would cost more than any possible savings in the life of the truck.
And there would be no savings as where you lose mileage is on the delta V or the speed change. These trucks get bad gas mileage because they are heavy with only 3 acceleration gears. Put two more gears in the 0-60mph band and they would get much better gas mileage, but it would cost more for a nice six speed auto than anyone would ever want to pay as an option.
The reason they don’t have 5-6 speeds is just simple math. Gas was cheap when these trucks were designed. Now it is moderately expensive and going to get worse. At 3.50 a gallon a six speed would sell. It wouldn’t four years ago when the trucks were being designed.

Anyway the heavier rims will NEVER get better gas mileage. Taller tires very much might.
Again, that’s assuming you highway a lot.
Most would get better mileage with your 4.10 gears around town, but worse on the freeway. Since you are a freeway commuter it might be well worth your while to get taller rubber, presuming you can get it cheap. Still probably would not pay for itself.

Ran out of room;

 

I got better mileage from my tonneau, tested and proven (no surprise, we’ve done lots of tests on the subject over the years).
I also got better mileage from a K&N air filter.
I did NOT get better mileage from a Brute Force intake. Only slightly more power, but that is with a 4.6 and they have a pretty good intake from the factory.
Lots of people get much more improvement with the 5.4 and an intake.
For cost vs. miles per gallon a fabric tonneau and a K&N filter are the only two mods I would expect to show a profit in less than a year.

Efans are not really intended to run all the time. Your stock fan doesn’t run all the time as it has a thematically controlled clutch that disengages it at road speed unless it is hot.

Running e-Fans all the time would cost a lot in power. The main gain to them is on cold startup. Rather than spin a useless heavy viscous fluid fan which cools an already cool engine and draws big horsepower you just drive away with the fans silent and not wasting any power.
Then when you need the fans, slow speed running, very hot days, etc. they cool you down, then switch off.
Running them constantly would work, but cost you your profit. Energy is energy, whether it is energy used to spin a big air blade via a belt or energy to spin a couple of smaller air blades via a belt to an alternator to the fan.
If the e-Fan runs exactly as much as the viscous fluid fan then it would draw even more horsepower as there would be loss in the conversion from mechanical energy (engine turning) to electrical energy. There is loss at every step of the way, plus conversion losses.


On the way people assume you drive heavy, that’s not really it. These trucks have very different driving results than previous trucks.
Drive by wire, clutching torque converters and the heavy frame, plus the learning transmission all contribute to a different driving experience.
Things that worked perfectly on a non-clutching torque converter in a lighter truck cost gas and brake wear that would NOT be normal on the previous models.
Getting used to drive by wire alone can take weeks. Some never adapt and you see their posts about brake problems, really rotten gas mileage, throttle problems that don’t seem to make sense. It’s not that they are doing anything bad, it’s just the rules have changed a bit with this model.






The regular vs. premium on Edge, Diablo, Superchips etc. tuners is being misstated.

I went to premium when regular was 3.20 a gallon and premium was 3.39 a gallon. That is 6% difference.
I found I was getting about 8% better gas mileage on the around town miles, where my mileage stinks, and 6% better on the open road. Thus it ‘paid for itself’ with the improvement in power a freebie.
At present prices 2.45 and 2.65 today the difference is 8 percent so using premium today costs me nothing around town and about 2% more on the freeway. Amortized over my usual driving range it costs me roughly 1% more for premium. The extra power is well worth it. As to people not noticing more power, there must be some other factor.
On stock if I drop the hammer in front of my house I burn about 1 foot of rubber. With any of my three tuners on premium I get about 4-9 feet of rubber, plus it chirps on second.
My wife doesn’t like to drive the truck unless it’s on premium. Her car has a Northstar so she is used to a touch more power than my truck. When she drives my F150 tuned to she calls it ‘gutless’. With the tune she says ‘it’s fun’.
My little truck with a tuner is not the same truck as without the tuner, period.

Well, have a great one
Chris