My 97 2wd dually 5speed 12v. I still need to add timing and add a bigger exhaust. Should easily add another 1mpg all around. My truck also has a 4.10 gear which adds towing capacity I don't need. Rpm sit at 2400 at 70mph the sweet spot to get even better mpg is 1800-2k. Im tempted to change the gear out to a 3.30 or 3.56 since I don't tow over 10k.

Diesel power bought a 97 3500 12v auto dually Did 40$ Worth of mods. And got 29-30mpg highway. The article is out there if you search for it.

Probably got ya beat on that. I paid $3600 on clist. For a 160k miles cummins.
Realistically the going rate on my truck is prob 6-7500k. Lady that was selling it didn't know the value of the truck.

I could sleep in my truck but I usually set up a tent.

 

It looks like the limit is 80 KMH (~50 MPH) for cars and trucks with trailers of a certain type, with 100 KMH (~62 MPH) for trailers certified for that speed. I'm not clear on what the difference is with the trailers, but I am thinking probably a dual axle trailer with electric brakes would qualify.

Granted, even travelling at 62 MPH would be horrifying on the autobahns and pretty damn miserable on the highways I routinely travel.

Not as miserable (to me) as having to daily drive a big-*** tow rig.


More pictures:

 

I have a 2002 24V Cummins with the 3.55 rear end, Edge tuner, 4" Exhaust, FASS Lift pump and brand new Injector pump. I'm not saying you are wrong but I would have to drive the truck and calculate the fuel economy by hand myself before I believed it.

 

I get what your trying to say I dislike driving my truck in the city, stop and go traffic is annoying. Reminds when used daily my mkiv supra terrible mpg(e85), laggy power band, annoying heavy clutch. It's a lot of work to drive in traffic but man having 700hp on tap is cool. Highway though was fine they both were great I just don't drive much highway.

El caminos? My fathers other tow rig is a 67 plymouth belvedere II big block 4 spd pretty cool old School car. Car on the trailer is a 30k original miles Mr. Norms Demon. Factory Paxton supercharged 340. Very cool and still in the family.

 

2 or 4wd?

I have no read out display in my 97 always done by hand. my former dodge 98 4x4 12v 5spd would never get over 18 to 19 mpg hwy. not sure why it was 100% stock the whole time I owned it.

 

I should clarify. My main point is that it's personal. I have nothing against other people driving trucks and I think there are some seriously cool trucks out there. I like the idea of certain trucks, like MotoIQ's Project Tundra:




For me, though, it'd be a bad fit. Half the time I keep a Pbox in my daily commuter and may or may not attempt "high scores" on the peak G readout. 0.9g so far. Allegedly.

 

For all you guys complaining about the cost if tricks need to be looking for them in places where they are plentiful. Good full size tricks sell around my parts for dirt cheep because rednecks with money will upgrade to new trucks every two years.

 

They taped off the grill and seams, shut the engine fans off, ran the motor hot, folded the mirrors in, removed the trailer hitch, overinflated the tires, and hypermiled the truck. I could probably do all that bullshit to my Duramax and achieve similar results, but I actually use my truck to do truck things.

 

I use an old 1996 F150 5.0 I bought from a friend for cheap and tow a 16' Carson California Car Hauler. Considering the pair cost less than $6000 for everything(including various accessories for towing) it has worked out great. It'd be nice to have a newer truck but until this thing blows it's staying around. This is an old photo before I got the Carson.

 

Might be trading a Miata for this diesel van.

 

I agree taping the seams and folding the mirrors in is dumb. Removing hitch off a heavy *** truck? no difference, it's still a heavy *** truck. More air in tires whats that good for 2%? My point was if they can get 31mpg "hypermilling" it, I can easily achieve mid 20s.

It wasn't ran "hot" though the cooling capacity in 12v's is crazy and they like to be ran hot. I removed my clutch fan and block my front grill my truck never even gets close to 210 is degrees usually around 180-190. (230 is cause for concern tho)

 

there is irony in this...lol

 

Got this for my tow rig last week, stoked! Got a good deal on it, low miles, fully loaded, huge transmission cooler, and old man owned and maintained.

 

That old IDI diesel is not the same as a 7.3 powerstroke. They are sslllooowww. I don't think they even put turbos on the IDI until maybe 1994.

 

Since it came up, the Dodge mpg calculator on the Dodge 5.9L Cummins is a joke. It is highly optimistic, and has been reported as such on the various Dodge forums.

Checking my 2006 5.9L with hand calcs, it is routinely 20%+ optimistic, reporting 24 mpg (calculated during use of a full tank over two weeks) when I am actually only getting 19 mpg via hand calcs. This behavior has been the same over several tanks of gas over months, commuting to work, mostly highway with some city driving.

The silly thing is, that when I track mpg using Torque using Torque's 5.9L Cummins map, it is very accurate, within 1 mpg or less. Since the data is coming from the CAN bus, Torque is using the same data available to the Dodge mpg computer. That begs the question, how did the Dodge trip computer programmers get it so wrong? My cynical side says it is a sales tactic, so when you are test driving the truck, the slimy salesman can point to the mpg readout and brag about how great it is compared to the competitors.

Point is, the Dodge Cummins mpg computer is full of ****.

 

I know it is not a powerstroke. Finding a 7.3L powerstroke van in decent condition is extremely hard. The few I have really seen are way out of my price range for the time being. This would be a straight up trade of a spare miata for the van. In a year or two after I am settled into my new house I would go in search of a powerstroke.

 

I understand, and the price is right.

One of the guys at DIY has a E-superduty van with the 7.3 he uses as his towpig, and that engine is OMG hard to work on in the van body. You might want to look at Ford V10 6.8 and Chevy V8 8.1 gassers.

I have a 6.0. It has increased maintenance costs vs the 7.3 in terms of you actually have to maintain them (the 7.3's where often neglected). However it runs circles around the 7.3 and has a dramatically better transmission.

 

Honestly if you can get an older dodge pickup with a cummins 12v, the 94-98 are the best in my opinion because its still all mechanical as far as engine management no electronics and the injection pump(p-pump) was the best and most reliable design. I used to have a car hauling company and we had three 1996 dodge ram 3500 cab and chassis with flatbeds and would haul a 53' three car trailer behind them loaded I would average about 15mpg(truck was 5speed). In the summer to keep my profits up on hauling me and my partner decided to put semi fuel tanks on the flat beds(120 gallon tanks) and run veggie oil(truck ran awesome if filtered the oil correctly and smelled like french fries). That truck on the regular would haul 30,000+ pounds of trailer and vehicles and never had an issue with the motor. Our biggest issues with the truck was brakes and wheel bearing in the front but that is understandable looking back at some of the stuff we hauled with these trucks and the hills we went down. The early 90's dodge diesels are not bad either just had a rotary style injection pump that wasn't as nice as that later years.

 

You guys are starting to re-sway my thoughts about a 4Runner and look at the next size up SUV.

 

The over sized tow rig thing is funny. Buying a diesel to pull an open trailer means you just have a tiny *****. The 5 grand premium they pull over a gasser just gallon doesnt pay for itself when the diesel is only getting at most 5 mpg more than the gasser and diesel costs so much more per gallon.

Now the diesel makes sense for drivability if you're towing an enclosed especially in a hilly area. But any decent gasser is going to be able to pull an open trailer with a miata on it easily and safely and cost less $/mile to tow than the diesel.