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JustLuckey,
Congrats on the birth of your son!
I also have a 2005 Dodge Ram 2500 4X4 CTD but mine is a LWB and has the G56 6-speed manual transmission. I LOVE my truck. My best (hand calc) FE in the truck is 22.5mpg, but I'm usually in the 21-22mpg range most of the time. Everything is stock on the engine, stock wheels and tires, and stock ride height. I have a Pace-Edwards JackRabbt tonneau cover that helps a bit with mpg's. Also, I tried the tailgate removal trick, and my mpg's actually went down slightly. My best mpgs are with the tailgate up and tonneau cover closed.
IMO, these trucks can probably be pushed to higher mpg's, but what I ran into is that these Cummins diesels don't like to loaf along under light load for too long or they complain. They're meant to be worked, and if you don't work them, they get sluggish, run rough, and suffer from wet stacking (washdown) leading to increased fuel dilution in the oil. Just not worth it, IMO. I ended up having to run the truck hard periodically or hook it to a load just to prevent too much cylinder washdown and get it running right. And that negates the FE efforts. Also the Cummins is just not conducive to many hypermiling techniques such as FAS-ing. I love my truck a lot and refuse to part with it though. I have 170,000 miles on it and hope to run it at least another 170,000 miles. But, I finally decided it was more efficient for me to park my truck and commute to work in my minivan instead. The fuel cost savings alone on my 140-mile daily commute, along with carpooling, actually is enough to fully cover my minivan's loan payment and then some.
I'll be interested to see your progress in eeking more mpg's out of your CTD though. One thing to consider looking into is getting a programmer that will eliminate that third injection event, which only serves to clean up the CTD's emissions. My understanding is that you can pick up another 1-2mpg just by making this mod. Maybe one of your existing programmers already has this capability. Good luck!
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