Powerboost Driving Observations

[HammaMan]

I hooked up my 6500 lb trailer for the first time this weekend, for a total of about ~200 miles of towing, mostly in the 45-60 mph range over flat or low rolling terrain. I spent most of that time in Tow/Haul mode (roughly 11mpg), but tried towing in Normal mode a bit to see how that would improve mpg in the flat stretches. Surprisingly, mpg seemed to go down a bit using Normal mode (averaging down from 11.3 to 10.8, and then the same thing the next day before I stopped the experiment). Both modes were locking out gears 8-10. Has this been anybody else's experience? It seems counter-intuitive that always leaving the ICE on but waiting longer to shift would actually be more fuel efficient.

I need to do more testing before I'm confident that this is the case, but in my VERY limited sample, it seemed to play out both times.

Lock out 8-10 and try again. The goal is to stay out of boost, and this is far more likely to occur in the OD gears. Tow / Haul is to change the logic -- this can be accomplished manually by a more hands-on approach. They key to fuel economy is to stay out of boost!

The issue is that you drive around mostly empty. The transmission learns this and when towing you've got a lot of aero drag with box style trailers. The tran's logic reverts to what you've taught it so you need to manually set your gear limits to limit it. By locking out gears you can get better behavior than tow/haul provides as even it's not aggressive with engine breaking. Don't be afraid to operate the truck with a more hands on approach. It'll upshift just fine, it's the downshifting you must manage and lock out OD gears. You don't need to use the manual mode, just start hitting- on the gear selector and your display will remove the gears you've instructed it to.

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[Aron]

Lock out 8-10 and try again. The goal is to stay out of boost, and this is far more likely to occur in the OD gears. Tow / Haul is to change the logic -- this can be accomplished manually by a more hands-on approach. They key to fuel economy is to stay out of boost!

The issue is that you drive around mostly empty. The transmission learns this and when towing you've got a lot of aero drag with box style trailers. The tran's logic reverts to what you've taught it so you need to manually set your gear limits to limit it. By locking out gears you can get better behavior than tow/haul provides as even it's not aggressive with engine breaking. Don't be afraid to operate the truck with a more hands on approach. It'll upshift just fine, it's the downshifting you must manage and lock out OD gears. You don't need to use the manual mode, just start hitting- on the gear selector and your display will remove the gears you've instructed it to.

I locked out the 8-10 gears in both scenarios (tow/haul and normal).

 

[Old Bear]

Too much good stuff here, had to copy it all out to a document to save and print!

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