1979 Ford F150 over 24mpg, 2003 F150 almost half of that...

[dablack]

I think most of the improvements came from your attention to the 302.

I had a 71 F100 short bed and built a 460 for it. C6 auto and 3.5 rear gears. I had a performer aluminum intake, 750 cfm holley carb, port/polish D3VE heads, 9:1 compression, and headers. That truck would put down 14mpg on the highway and I thought that was great! I think with an overdrive manual transmission and 3.0 gears, I could have been getting 18 or 19 mpg with a 460! My 1990 F250 w/ 4:10 rear gears and E4OD (overdrive) only gets 13mpg going 60mph and it is EFI. Oh well. Miss my old 71!