[slowmover]

Other:

Contributor "steve05ram360" has caught the attention of somewhat FE concious CTD owners on CumminsForum (in the 3rd Gen forums). He certainly has fun doing experiments and runs a lot of miles, but it can be hard to separate what works at times. That said, some good insights on running a CTD.

One telling modification (I'm generally against spending to try to save) is a set of freewheel front hubs on a 4WD. That, and best tires should be worth 2.5-mpg to the annual average. Might be more, but I doubt it would be much less.

In the reference section at EM should be some discussions about driver feedback. OBD readers. I use the Ultragauge (ScanGauge is another) and I prefer to be able to read:

Engine Load
Manifold Pressure
Throttle Percentage

Others are Intake air temp and average mph. I'd imagine the latest versions of these can do more, but CTDs aren't fully supported as would be som gasoline versions.

(As well as a direct read of coolant temp; re above use of heat exchanger covers).

I stated in an above post that highest average mph is "best". This is in reference to:

- avoidance of idling
- avoidance of stopping

that, when combined with

-avoidance of cold starts

pays huge dividends on these four ton trucks used for daily driving.

While it should be fairly easy to design an ideal commute route (non-stop if at all possible, to the point of being a fair number of miles longer; relatively)

- Design a route to carry out the usual errands is the moneymaker.

I've covered this before; took the challenge from Diesel Dave that the mpg discrepancy between highway and city could be narrowed to near nothing, if not reversed (he did so). I took my lazy boy 18-mpg city (24-mpg + highway) to 21-mpg by using tactics developed by commercial truck operators such as Fed-Ex:

Going to the farthest point on the highway for best warm-up. No left turns, attention to where to park (egress!"), etc. Count the number of accel and decel vents and then reduce them next time. Route familiarity is huge. Use Mapquest Best Routing to understand. Hell, 90% of us go to 90% of the same places 90%
of the time. So, trip plan it. My way was to combine scattered errands into one long loop on Saturday and not drive at all on Sunday.

Cut the miles due to personal business. Drive the remaining miles at a higher level of skill.

The fuel use reduction was such that (after my 1,100-mile experiment) that extrapolated against my average annual mileage that it would "pay" for 5,000-miles of towing my travel trailer (the annual RV'er average). Obviously one must keep records to gauge effectiveness, and it's a helluva nice incentive.

There's a recent thread on either the Cummins or Kenworth White Paper Fuel Economy .pdfs. Note that after truck spec, the FE determinants are

Climate
Terrain
Driver motivation

Thus, absolute numbers MUST be filtered by these criteria. Where I live as well as my truck spec and motivation are almost ideal. Yet I'm no where near the mpg as seen by those who are really serious about what an empty, solo CTD can do. See threads/posts by Diesel Dave.

To those who are "skeptical" I'd refer them to the old Mobil Economy Runs of the 1950-1970 period. Someone "serious" could realm pull off some unreal numbers (for those tests, "cheating"; but not so by an owner; if applicable).
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