I have a 2000 F150 w/ a 5.4 and tow a 4500 lb. travel trailer. I was wondering is there a product that will give me increased gas mileage and performance. I am open to any and all suggestions, right now I am getting about 9 mpg and with prices the way they are I would be willing to spend some money to increase my mileage and range. I am new to this forum and spent some time reading posts, but I thought that someone out there might be able answer my question without me having to search thru all of the different posts. Thanks in advance for any help you might offer.
John

 

Towing is one of the tunes you can have set from Troyer...I wish I could tell you how much it would help your mpg, but I just faxed my paperwork on Monday, so I'm waiting in line. I can tell you that on my Mark VIII I put underdrive pullies and an electric waterpump so boost performance, and a happy side benefit was that when I put the cruise control on I got about 50 more miles out of a tank...I have those coming for my F150 too. A cold air intake would help also...Air Force, K&N, whatever.

 

There are a lot of variables that impact towing gas mileage.

I tow a 8,300 lb 5th wheel with a 2004 F140 5.4L FX4 with a 3.73 rear end. I have a cold air intake, performance muffler and Xcal2 from Mike with an 87 towing tune and a 91 towing tune.

On my first trip, before mods, with 1,000 miles on the truck and cruising at speeds in the upper 60's, I got 6 to 8 miles per gallon.

I now get 9 to 10 mpg towing in cruise control at around 62 mph.

Since the mods were done at different times, I have a feel for the independent impact.

The three things that seem to have improved my mileage most are, slowing down, a cold air intake system and more miles on the truck.

The cold air intake was hands down the best mileage enhancing modification I've made. But, it is my understanding that this mod delivers better for the newer (2004 and after) F150's than it does for older models.

My truck is loaded to the point that overdrive only works on level or downhill roads when there isn't a siginficant headwind. 62 mph keeps the rpm more reasonable, both in drive and when the tranny kicks down to climb a hill. From trial and error it seems to be the "top of the green" for my combination.

As far as Xcal2 and Mikes performance tunes go, I have noticed an increase in power and better shifting, but have not noticed an improvement in towing gas mileage.

Regarding the Xcal2 towing tune power increase, it is, as you would expect, most noticable and useable in lower gears and at higher rpms. I can accelerate from a stop much faster and climb moderate hills better. However, in overdrive, the power increase isn't enough to make a big difference in the number of downshifts needed to maintain speed.

I've only had one eye opening gas mileage data point since installing the custom tunes. My wife got 18.5 mpg on the highway (not towing) using the 87 towing tune. I normally get in the low 17 mpg range on the highway. However, unless I see more data points like this, I can't credit the Xcal2 for the phenomenon.

Hope this helps.

 

Hi John,

There are any number of things you can do to improve both the fuel mileage and the performance in that 2000 F-150.

the single best bang for the buck is our custom tuning - nothing else will improve performance more for the same or less cost - and the effects on fuel mileage have been well documented here in numerous posts over the past 5 years or so. the average gains runs .7-1.5 more mpg - some people don't see any, and some people see 3 more mpg - your results will depend on how you drive it and the actual BTU content of the fuel being used.

Getting the restriction out of the air intake tract is the #2 best bang for the buck, and we have documented in proper back to back testing is about a .5 mpg. Not once have we ever seen a 1.0-2.0 MPG gain from that modification, I think that is far too much to expect from that mod - which is why we've never seen those kinds of numbers in our testing. But it is the #2 best bang for the buck, both in terms of power gained and in terms of the potential for MPG gain - reducing restriction in the air intake tract does indeed help both.

Now if someone was looking *primarily* for MPG gains and didn't care about the vast improvement in driveability, transmission shifting, throttle response & so many other aspects, then I would say to go with our electric fan conversion kit and underdrive pulley set - those 2 mods will net about 25 HP at the wheels, as well as getting you anywhere from a low of about 1.2 more MPG to as much as 3.5 more MPG.

If you'd like to go over this in more detail & get a good feel for what you can realistically expect from virtually any type of modification to these trucks in terms of performance and MPG, please feel free to give us a call at our number listed below, we'll be happy to help.

Thanks for your post, & best of luck with your truck!

 

Regarding trying to get gas mileage improvement information associated with a specific enhancment, I believe Mike will be one of the first to admit it's a tough nut to crack. There are a lot of variables involved in the results achieved.

Unlike Mike, I only have data from one truck. Further complicating my ability to give a pure number is the fact that I installed the cold air intake in late December. Winter gas mileage in the cold climates seems to be significantly lower and more erratic than summer mileage. In addition, my truck was still breaking in when I installed the cold air intake. Finally, I installed a Volant which is not the air intake that Mike recommends. I'm guessing most of Mike's data is with the AF1.

With all those qualifications stated I did see numbers in the 1.4 mpg range when comparing the three tanks before to the three tanks after the upgrade. It ain't perfect, but it's the best data that I'm going to get with this truck.

In addition, my highway mileage between fall of 2004 and spring of 2005 went up more than 1.4 mpg. The two big changes were break in and the Volant.

I agree with Mike when power is the first priority. The tune is king.

However, when fuel economy is the desire, the answer is clear. For a premium tune to compete evenly with an intake, the tune mileage increase has to match the intake mileage increase PLUS and additional 1.4 mpg because of the higher gas price and higher mod cost. For an unleaded tune to compete with an intake mod, the unleaded tune has to match the intake mileage increase plus an additional approximately .4 mpg because of the higher mod cost. I've segregated the math below so as not to put everyone to sleep. No offense intended, but I just don't see a tune smoking the mileage increase of an intake by those sorts of numbers regardless of who is collecting data.

I stand by my statement that, for fuel economy a tune is very unlikely to outperform an intake, even if the intake delivers little.

I have an xcal2 and if I didn't have one, I'd be ordering one... but not for fuel economy.

Enjoy.

************************************************** *******

Math for xcal2 running premium:

A. Higher gas price:

Pu = Price Unleaded = $3.00
Pp = Price Premium = $3.20
Ms = Mileage starting = 15 mpg
Cs = Cost per mile starting = Pu / Ms = $.20 per mile.
Mp = Mileage Premium (to break even at higher gas price) = Pp / Cs = 16 mpg

One mile per gallon is needed to offset $.20 per gallon higher gas price.

Math for higher modification cost:

Xcal2 cost = $499
AF1 cost = 239
HMC = Difference = 260

Rm = Recover over 50,000 miles.

Gallons over recovery miles 50,000 / 16 mpg = 3,125 gallons
Gas cost = 3,125 * $3.20 / gal = $10,000
Add HMC 260
Total $10,260

Cost per gallon plus HMC $10,260 / 3,125 = $3.2832

Mp = Mileage Premium (to break even) = $3.2832 / .20 = 16.416 mpg.

 

Excuse the wrong forum Mike, but I noticed you mentioned fans here.

I don't fully understand how fans would help gas mileage or cruising power. I can conceptualize how they would help quarter mile times only.

All I can see is that you are taking the weight of the fan and pulley off of the drive train. So, I can see how your power would increase under acceleration due to less inertia to overcome.

But, once you are at cruising rpm's, I don't see the horse power or efficiency gain. What am I missing?

Thanks.

 

Hi Les,

Sure! What you may be missing is the factor of no longer having to spin that heavy mechanical fan and it's clutch - see, that reduces "parasitic" losses, and when you do that, you cannot have the potential for increased power without the potential for increased MPG, too. The fan doesn't spin itself, the engine has to expend power (and that power is only made by burning fuel) to turn it - eliminate the fan and you pick up power to the rear wheels, and the engine no longer has to burn the same amount of fuel.

For those who know how this works, the temperature sensing mechanism works very poorly for fan clutch engage-disengagement (in addition to being in a bad location for such a device), so the fan spends very little (no usually no) time free-wheeling. Thus the engine has to waste considerable power - which is only produced by burning fuel - turning that antiquated heavy assembly.

The power gains and the MPG gains come from the exact same thing - the engine no longer having to expend that extra energy (power and the fuel it takes to make that power) turning that decades out of date mechanical fan and it's associated parasitic loss - remove that and you pick up both power and MPG - very simple. You cannot pick up one without getting the other in this scenario, as we're talking about *parasitic* losses being reduced or eliminated, and that always causes less fuel to be burned, as the engine expends less total energy.

It's not a matter of just picking up power with our tuning, either - remember, ANY TIME you increase part-throttle power, you also introduce MPG savings too when operating at the same throttle position, because the engine does not have to work as hard for a given % of power demand. Very simple.

With some parts, like out tuning, it is possible to negate those MPG gains by driving it harder or feeding it cheap fuel, or filling up at a different place, or even at the same place but a fuel formulation change has been made that the driver is no aware of - all of that is possible and happens across the country, we have to deal with that every day.

BTW - not once on any vehicle of ours over the past 15+ years have we ever failed to see significant MPG gains as a result of our tuning, and gains far in excess of any intake kit. Not once have we ever seen any intake kit on any vehicle even remotely approach the MPG gains that our tuning delivers in properly controlled testing.

The only way you are not going to see an increase in mpg from our tuning is from either driving the vehicle harder (as almost everyone does when they get their tuning, whether they realize or admit it or not) or using a fuel with a lower energy content - whether that is caused by people burning different brands of fuel (which completely negates any possible control and thus completely invalidates any resultant numbers) or via scenarios in which they are comparing winterized fuels to summer blends - and even the more frequent scenarios seen over the past few years where even at the same brand and station, the formulation of the fuel being delivered changes without the driver or station owner's knowledge.

This is why when *we* do MPG testing for specific parts or modifications, we use a very specific fuel source delivered to us where we can guarantee the BTU content & formulation do not vary and thus take any such skew out of it - but then, our testing is far more accurate & detailed than what 99.9% of regular vehicle owners do.

There is one way to verify what I am saying - and that is to put an engine an engine dyno and do proper before & after BSFC (brake specific fuel consumption) testing - as in *every* case where the fuel is a properly controlled fuel, we have seen the BFSC drop any time engine power is increased on part-throttle - as it is with our tuning. It's a bit of a pain to do, as the engine must come out and be set up to run "as installed" in the vehicle on an engine dyno - but we did some of this some time back to prove our point. Now whether that translates into MPG improvements in a given vehicle is up to the driver and how much attention they pay to actually doing properly controlled "testing," to include fuel quality control.

Remember, we don't care who does what, what company claims what, etc - what we are interested in is just what actually happens - what does what & what happens as a result.

Les - I hope that made more sense to you than it did to me when I read it back just now - in fact, before even posting it I re-edited a couple of times to try to explain a bit better!

 

Thanks for the reply on the fan Mike. Now I have something for my Santa list.

As always, I will continue to check mileage on my truck. As it stands right now, I've had a noticable jump in mileage on the intake, none on the exhaust or tunes. However, I haven't gathered extensive data on the tunes yet. I mostly drive a motorcycle when it's not snowing. Besides with three tunes (four counting factory) and three driving modes, city, highway and towing, it takes a while to sort out trends.

I'm actually not trying to sell intakes. It's just that the intake mod on my 04 F150 has out delivered any intake I've ever made in the past, excluding one motorcycle. If I had it to do over again and could do only one mod on the 04 F150, that would still be it.

Enjoy.

 

Hi Les,

I agree with you 100% that a properly designed intake kit does far more for power gains at very low rpms and less at higher rpms in the 2004 & up 5.4 3V F-150's than it did on the 2003 & earlier trucks - even though it still did a fine job on the 2003 & earlier trucks too.

The AF1 and the Airaid for the 2004 & up 5.4 3V deliver larger power gains at low rpms simply because with the 2004 5.4 3V F-150 the factory intake kit was engineered so that it is extremely restrictive until you hit a very narrow rpm range - about 4700-5000 rpm - everywhere above and below that it's terribly restrictive. So this is why we see, for example, 20 HP from the AF1 at the rear wheels at just 2000 rpm, and 25 HP at the wheels at just 3000 rpm - while the actual *peak* gain is about 10 HP at 5000 rpm - this basically reversed pattern of power gains from the intake kit is due to how Ford designed the new 5.4 3V F-150's intake system.

One other thing to be aware of is that you need to datalog as per our instructions - you need to do both the no-load and the load (full-throttle datalogging to insure that truck is actually achieving it's commanded A/F ratios - this is critically important in the 3V engines due to the new MAF system and the fact that the factory MAF transfer function varies greatly, and that as more time goes by, we are seeing more & more MAF sensor failures. They don't' fail outright, they simply skew the data providing about 1 volt less than they should to the PCM.

We tuned your truck back in July and do not have any data from that tuning. You have the XCalibrator 2, so you can datalog everything that is required except for the A/F ratios just using the XCal 2 and the LiveLink software, so I would get that done, to include wideband A/F testing and get that data to us so we cna take a look at it.

We have seen some trucks pick up abnormally large mpg gains from installing an intake kit, but they were unsustainable in every instance because the A/F's were too lean - thus we do not count them, as every time we correct those A/F's those MPG gains drop right back down into the more normal .5 mpg range.

So given your claim of such large mpg gains from the intake but none from the tuning, something is obviously wrong - so I suggest datalogging that vehicle and providing us with that data so we can take a look and see what it going on - that is what true custom tuning is all about, and no custom tune is finished until we have that data and have made any adjustments as required.

Remember, some of these trucks are perfectly fine, but some of them are not - for example, Marc Carpenter's truck, a low mileage 2004 that is meticulously cared for, was running 2 full points leaner than commanded A/F despite a proper installation and NO warning lights on the dash or codes being set! We just had him on the dyno and found out that his MAF sensor was failing, as it never hit more than 3.3 volts and that was why it was running so lean and getting such great fuel mileage.

The bottom line is, as time goes by we are seeing more MAF sensor problems in these trucks causing lean conditions - not the intake kits themselves (well, at least not with the AF1 or Airaid), we're seeing more problems with the MAF sensors and their transfer functions, and the only way to identify that is to do proper and thorough datalogging and sending that data to us so we can analyze it.

So given the numbers you are posting for mpg results, I strongly recommend that you get your datalogging done and provide that data to us as we describe in our datalogging instructions so we can take a look and see what is going on, as despite the fact that good intake kits like the AF1 & Airaid providing large power gains down low, it is not normal to pick up any 1.5-2.0 mpg gains from just installing an intake kit on a 3-ton truck. Our normal results on a truck achieving it's commanded A/F's is .5 mpg, which is a big gain for a simple intake kit on such a vehicle. So something else is most likely contributing to that huge mpg gain you are seeing (especially given the fact that not once has that kind of mpg gain ever been seen in properly controlled testing), and so your truck's data needs to be looked at.

Make sure the fuel rail pressure sensor is properly connected to it's vacuum source, and then clear the PCM and do the datalogging as we describe in the datalogging instructions you received in the same email that contained your custom program worksheets, so we can take a look and see just what is really going on. Chances are there is more power to be gained as well.

If you have any questions on how to do this, please just give us a call and I can walk you thru that, Les.

Good luck!

 

I pretty much assumed datalogging was aimed at trucks with serious modificatoins like superchargers and injector mods.

I'll start datalogging and send you the results.

 

Hi Les,

Actually I take the blame for that, and I should explain..........

You are absolutely right - historically, in general, we have usually said that we're looking for datalogging in the more "significantly" modified trucks, and then any time the customer requests changing in the engine tuning - Now I still feel that way on the pre-2004 F-150's, as they still use the traditional MAF meter - so they really only need to be datalogged if there are modifications that would change the A/F's (a supercharger, different injectors, different MAF meter, etc.), or if the customer wants engine tuning changes, I still think that is appropriate for the 2003 & earlier F-series.

But for the 3-valve 2004 & newer vehicles, which all use the newer MAF sensor design where there is no traditional MAF meter, but instead use the much smaller MAF sensor that slides into the air handling tube, *that* is where we are starting to see a tad more more variance - and it's just a few vehicles here and there. Even with the "traditional" MAF meters, over time their hot wires get dirty and cause a lean drift - so we have always recommended that they be cleaned with a shot of electrical contact cleaner once a year. I think we are going to start recommending the same thing for the new MAF sensors on the 2004 & newer trucks, or I should probably more accurately say, in all of the 3-valve motors, as it's (so far) just those 3V's that use this new MAF system.

In fact, we are going to start carrying a few of those new style MAF sensors in stock, as we can get them at a much better price than what dealerships charge, so that for those who are out of warranty and cannot be improved by the normal procedure of hitting it with some contact cleaner and letting it dry (evaporate) for say, a half-hour, we can provide a brand new replacement.

My apologies if I seemed to have gotten "carried away" a bit here in our discussions on this over the past few posts, I don't want anyone to start worrying all of a sudden as there really is no cause for that - I guess it's just that as a tuner, when I see something different from what we tend to see as "the norm" in *our* minds, we tend to question it and want to see data just to check on things.

Since you have the XCal 2, I would suggest for now, before taking it to a dyno to get the A/F's (unless that just happens to be very convenient for you) it would be nice to do the no-load datalogging like we describe in our docs, and then take the truck somewhere on a back road, and do a full-throttle 2nd gear pull (so you'll have some load on the motor but still won't be going really fast), recording all the same data as you record in the no-load datalogging. That would not give us the A/F's, but it *will* give me the fuel trims and it will also allow me to see if that MAF sensor is *way* off - it should generally peak at somewhere between 4.2-4.3 volts on a full-throttle 2nd gear pull normally aspirated. The method for doing that 2nd gear WOT pull would be to just take it on a side road somewhere wherever you feel comfortable, and start recording the data, and then with the transmission level in the "2" position (so it cannot upshift or downshift), nail it from a dead stop and keep it at full-throttle until it hits the rev limiter - then just "snick" the tranny lever up into drive and enable overdrive, and slow the truck down to a stop, and then stop the recording. (and here I'm obviously talking about using a laptop with Windows XP and the LiveLink software with the XCal 2 connected to the OBD-II port on one end, and connected to the laptop's USB port on the other end.) Then send me that file (LiveLink outputs a .csv file) and I can take a look at it along with all of the no-load data that you would enter into our spreadsheet template. For the 2nd gear WOT pull, you don't need to enter that into our spreadsheet template, you can just send me the raw .csv file that the LiveLink datalogging software outputs, as I can see the MAF voltage from that, and then along with your fuel trim data, see if we have a basic problem where we really need to get some A/F ratios on it, or if we're OK, etc.

I don't remember how long it's been since we tuned you, but we may need to send you another email that has our datalogging instructions & Excel spreadsheet template - that info is always sent in the original email that contained our custom program worksheets, but I don't know if you would still have that by now - if not, we can just email it again.

How's that sound? And of course, any questions on this, just give me a call and I'll go over this with you to get this "quickie" type of datalog so we can see if we have an issue or if we're OK, or if we actually need more data, etc. for you.

It'll be interesting to see if you really are getting a "sustainable" 1.0-2.0 mpg gain from the intake, as if so, that's excellent!