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Just an update on the progress of the truck. I ordered tonneau cover for the truck to help with the aero situation. I also added(read detracted from the aero) by adding some Weathertech window visors. I don't use the AC and tend to crack my windows when driving down the road. These should cut the wind noise a little bit and allow me to open the windows in the rain to help with fogging.
This weekend I topped up the truck and put in some fuel injector cleaner. Just did an engine flush/oil change and the results were pretty black even with fresh oil with 1000 miles on it. So the engine flush did a job. I am going to keep cleaning and flushing this engine to see if I can get as much gunk out of it as I can. I am just running conventional oil 5w/30 at this point since I know I am doing early oil changes to flush out the gunk. I can tell it has been neglected in the oil filler opening. So I have some work to do. I will run a couple of tanks of gas through it(with injector cleaner) and another flush to get things cleaned up. All this is in an attempt to correct the wrongs of the previous owners and try to level set this thing back to a normal level of performance from new/stock. Once I think I have most of the gunk flushed I will go ahead and mount the oil bypass filter and start the normal routine maint with synthetics.
So I will run some test loops over the next week or two just to put some miles on the truck and let the engine cleaner do it's job. Swapped out the air filter with a new element. I will try to do some baseline runs with the conventional oil and no cover on the truck and try to log the relevant data like the temp, wind direction, speed, number of stops etc to give you some info about the runs.
Fuel economy on the last tank was 269.66 miles on the tank, 10.863 gallons, 24.82 mpg. About 100 miles of this was city driving which of course really hits the fuel economy. I am still figuring out how to drive this in the city as each vehicle has its own preference and behavior which thankfully Ultragauge is helping me to understand.
It will probably be a couple of weeks before I do my next flush and drain depending if I can make my test runs and get some miles and cleaner through that engine. I don't normally drive the truck so I would be doing so mostly as part of these tests. Next update will be when I am ready to move to the synthetics and compare the test runs again. My tonneau has arrived and it is everything I can do to keep me from running out and putting it on! But for the sake of comparison I will wait until I have the data from the unaltered runs. I still have to pick out a route to run. I tried a route this evening after I finished the engine flush/oil change and I don't think that route I tried is going to work. So I have to give this some thought and do some more planning.
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