Looked through the forums and didnt find the exact question/answers i am looking for.

Do you guys/gals think it is beneficial to run the truck with the overdrive turned off when your running around town? I dont live in a city, but with all the new traffic from all the gas guys running around here, we get a lot more stop and go traffic in our little town. Most of my trips accumulate less than 8 miles round trip. My mileage has never impressed me with this truck since I bought it, but that the only thing I dont like about the truck.

 

If you go far enough fast enough to have it shift into OD, it helps a bit ..... but then you do use more brake with OD than you would in 3rd.

Get a ScanGagueII, set up some Xgagues, and it'll show you. It's simply speed devided by gallons per hour, it gives instant and average readings along with two other readouts of choice like trans temp or cylinder head temp or rear ratio or TC slippage % or ..... ?

I've compared my averages on trips where started from fillup and the SGII is very very near what the math says. If you start / stop / shutoff between fillups the average resets so then the comparrison may not hold as terrain varies.

 

My overdrive is always locked out in town, unless I will be doing a long stretch of driving where the average speed will be 45+ MPH. I really never saw any major improvement in fuel mileage (0.5 MPG tops), but I did see slightly better cooling of the engine, and better acceleration an deceleration from not having to shift in and out of overdrive. I also feel that not doing low RPM running in overdrive is a good thing for the transmission, as you have better transmission fluid flow at a higher RPM in drive at those speeds.

Maybe it is just me, but I have always felt that an engine is more economical at a 1500 to 2000 cruising RPM; anything lower is out of the powerband, any higher seems to kill MPG. Your experience may vary.