Add ons\upgrades for better MPG?

[Porpoise Hork]

Best things I have found are utilizing some tricks from the hypermilage fanatics. No jackrabbit starts, sticking to the speed limit, and anticipating red lights. If you see or know a red light is up ahead, coast as long as possible to avoid having to stop. The worst thing for city mileage is to race up to the red light and drop anchor. It takes a lot of fuel to get that nearly 6K pound truck moving so if you can time it right and maintain most of your momentum with as minimal acceleration events you can easily hit 26-27 mpg in city driving.

Other things to do is reduce weight if possible, stay up on oil changes and other maintenance. You'd be surprised at how much of a long term impact infrequent oil changes or dirty air filters can cause.

drive in eco mode.
run pizza cutter tires.
delete any parts that are heavy.

I too get les MPG in ECO mode.

Same here. I get worse mileage in Eco than when in normal. It's not much but it's about 2-3mpg worse over a tank vs normal.

Some claim the factory intercooler is inefficient and that adding a quality aftermarket one helps keep IATs in check while towing in the heat, and removes restriction enough to see a roughly 1 mpg increase. Not sure if it’s true, but I keep reading about it with those who add the CVF Titan V2 to their 3.5 and 2.7 trucks.

The factory intercooler is more than adequate for the vast majority of people/driving conditions and not worth the cost to upgrade as the gains are nominal at best. Where the aftermarket intercooler shines is it's increased size resists heat soak under prolonged boost situations that leads to reduced power. Since this is a situational event and not a part of normal everyday driving for most upgrading the intercooler won't help much. Now if you tow a lot or are in an area with hills where the engine routinely generates boost and your IAT suffer as a result, then yes it may be a viable upgrade.

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[fordhouston]

running eco mode for me makes my truck shift early as hell, thus less gas consumption as i am accelerating. downside is that V4 kicks in so damn much as opposed to normal mode.

 

[Porpoise Hork]

running eco mode for me makes my truck shift early as hell, thus less gas consumption as i am accelerating. downside is that V4 kicks in so damn much as opposed to normal mode.

The variable displacement the v8 has may be why you see an increase in mpg where us with the ecob's don't see the increase.

 

[Suns_PSD]

Hot air?
Cold air has always been preferred over hot air. I used to lay bags of ice on my intake before 1/4 mile runs. Colder air is more dense and contains more oxygen than warmer air... Ok setting all my nerdy engine building aside who has done CAI or duals or anything else for these newer builds?

I know this hurts the brain, BUT... engines get BETTER mpg with hot intake air because: 1) less O2 available, so the engine management computer adds less gasoline to maintain the same air/ fuel ratio, 2) the heat of vaporization is lowered making combustion quicker.

It's obviously not good for power, but it's definitely better for mpg.

I'd never run a hot air intake personally, but if mpg is the primary goal, a hot air intake should be utilized.

Anyways, in my younger years I spent plenty of time buying in to the advert hype of this or that improving mpg but in my experience only a few things actually work: Tuning (especially on diesels) can work (tune dependent obviously), driving slowly works especially limiting highway cruising speeds (the rate of air resistance increases exponentially above 55mph), high tire air pressure and of course low rolling resistance tires (also tires break in and get worse economy when brand new), occasionally a bed cover of sorts that alsolutely doesn't allow air to go underneath can work. High Octane gasoline can work, but the payback is never there.

I've also had very good luck with building a custom underside plastic cover. This is actually insanely effective and is a key to many economy car's efficiency. I once had a diesel VW car that was crashed, and when I got it back the economy was way off. When I looked under the car they had not replaced the aero under carriage. I got it added back on and mpg jumped right back up. I built a similiar system for my Corvette but did it for track performance to reduce front end lift (it worked very well at this) and it also became more fuel efficient.

Free flowing exhaust systems and intakes don't help economy and in fact only offer flow advantages when you are flowing a lot of air, aka most definitely not getting good mpg. You could even argue that due to the reduced air velocity of free flowing components that low speed efficiency might be reduced.

Some of this stuff is so minimal that it's very hard to accurately measure any efficiency changes because one little thing (i.e. cross wind, colder temps, open windows, idling of vehicle, etc.) can completely overshadow these other small differences.

 

[fordhouston]

The variable displacement the v8 has may be why you see an increase in mpg where us with the ecob's don't see the increase.

right on but wouldn't early shifts be a huge factor in reduced gas consumption? i mean factually speaking, the lower your RPM's are during your drive, the less gas you would consume overall? i feel like this concept applies to all powertrains regardless.

 

[Snakebitten]

right on but wouldn't early shifts be a huge factor in reduced gas consumption? i mean factually speaking, the lower your RPM's are during your drive, the less gas you would consume overall? i feel like this concept applies to all powertrains regardless.

When riding a 10-speed bike, the taller the gear the lower your leg-rpms.
Yet the tallest gear doesn't always require the least amount of energy. Shift too early and you will increase the amount of effort to sustain a speed.

One way to monitor if perhaps a lower gear might consume less fuel is to look at vacuum. Take your OBD Boost pid and change the parameters to allow a negative value below zero. So instead of the boost gauge being 0psi<>25psi, set it to -5psi<>25psi

Now you have an intake vacuum gauge.

You might be cruising along at 55mph and Ford's helll-bent overdrive shifting strategy already has you in 10th, the THIRD overdrive ratio. (which is silly in my opinion)

Look at vacuum on the boost gauge.
Let's say it's -1.5psi
Now lock out 10th, forcing the downshift to 9th. It WILL be an increase in rpms, but would if you find vacuum now increase to -3.8psi?

In my opinion you just increased fuel efficiency. If you were pedaling a 10-speed bike in 10th gear, but at a slow rate of speed, and then downshifted to ninth? Your thighs immediately thank you.

I personally feel that the factory shift strategy named "Normal" and "ECO" are both overly aggressive to get beyond 7th gear. I also believe that it overtaxes the torque converter and the clutch packs.
If it were a standard transmission with a clutch and the same available ratios and final drive ratio, I doubt very seriously that the average fella would be so quick to get to those 3 overdrive ratios.

 

[Tosh]

My Opinion: you can't add anything to the Powerboost that will increase MPG. Ford has done the work for you.

When I changed tires for winter, I lost 3 MPG average. OEM tires are the Goodyear Wranglers 275/65/18; the winter tires are Falken Wildpeak AT3 275/70/18 (on a 2nd set of Ford F-150 rims of the same weight).

Basically, any change you make to the PB is probably gonna hurt MPG.

Something that appears to be overlooked often is braking technique. With "regular" brakes, you usually want to avoid dragging the brakes. However, with regen braking, it's the opposite. Riding the brake for a longer period of time before a complete stop will put more charge into your battery and allow for more electric driving time. You can see this happening when using the EV coach display function, along with the ECO behavior display.

 

[amschind]

Actual practical answer: the lightest P-rated touring tires on the lightest rims (Weld Stealth W101 are 28# each....lightest that I have found and ~9# lighter than the stock Ford 20" wheels) you can get. More involved answer: buy a hybrid Maverick or wait for a hybrid Ranger.

As for stuff you potentially could do: I think that the most important mod would be wider gears on the transmission, trying to get 10th to something like 0.5:1. The second biggest improvement would be ICE:electric motor power ratios more similar to the 3.0L and 100 HP motor in the Lincoln Aviator hybrid, or even better, the 2.3L I4 mated to that electric motor AND the aforementioned wide-ratio 10R80. A money is no object build would try to mate a 2.3L I4 to the Aviator hybrid transmission: you would wind up with a rolling Frankenstein monster that periodically flashed disturbing "Please kill me, I should not be" messages on the infotainment system screen. I'm not even sure which computer you would use for such a beast, but there would be 3 candidates (original truck, motor donor vehicle and transmission/electric motor donor vehicle). However, all of that gets so expensive in terms of parts and reverse engineering computer stuff that I'm not sure you could ever justify it except as a passion project. Add to that the fact that you CAN'T re-gear a 10R80 (I contacted a performance builder who specializes in 10R80s and they said it's impossible), while any change in the rear end will hamstring efficiency be reducing the amount of time the truck spends in electric mode OR raising the final drive ratio.

I am holding out hope for the EV chassis to get a series hybrid version, so my plan is to keep the '21 PB around until Ford gets around to doing what they should be doing already. The F150s that Achates Power engine swapped got 37 MPG for gas and 43 MPG with diesel, I assume that smaller engines in a series hybrid powertrain would lose a little highway mileage but gain more in city mileage for something close to 40 MPG in a gas version.

 

[Zyvin]

Anything you do will make it worse. They’ve spent millions trying to get to those numbers, to pacify Washington’s pipe dreams.

If you change your antenna; you’re likely to lose mpg’s.

 

[Oakstone]

Anything you do will make it worse. They’ve spent millions trying to get to those numbers, to pacify Washington’s pipe dreams.

If you change your antenna; you’re likely to lose mpg’s.

Noooo but my stubby!

 

[Eskram]

It was fun to gauge MPG at first, but I've stopped worrying about it and have just fun driving it. Mostly tame, but I do dip into the throttle when I want.

I know I can squeak out max MPG if I want to, but.. I just dont care. Working from home, a full tank lasts me a month+ and I tend to enjoy most drives, in some way for a moment.

 

[discothan]

Anything you do will make it worse. They’ve spent millions trying to get to those numbers, to pacify Washington’s pipe dreams.

If you change your antenna; you’re likely to lose mpg’s.

This is why I'm not getting 24MPG.

 

[Zyvin]

This is why I'm not getting 24MPG.

lol yea . Those sticker numbers are also without a bed liner, no mud flaps, no running boards, no “salt life” sticker, no floor mats, and the cabin and tires filled with helium.

 

[LariatSpaceWhite2.7]

Spending some time on Tire Rack and see if you can find a tire that’s much lighter and in the eco category, doing both of those can definitely increase mileage.

 

[DT444T]

If you see or know a red light is up ahead, coast as long as possible to avoid having to stop. The worst thing for city mileage is to race up to the red light and drop anchor.

How do I quote this at my gf?

Driving up on/approaching a stale green, or a yellow light and she's STILL on the throttle. She seriously get like 18-19 and I can get 24 ezpz on the same route and take the same amount of time.

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