[beatr911]

Yeah the 3.0 is a holdover from when the older 4cyl motors just had no poop at all and the 4.0 was not offered yet. It was in production and used in other vehicles and was relatively cheap to produce to offer the V6 option to the many that wanted it. 26 mpg is a pretty good number.

These days the duratec 2.3 4 cylinder makes about the same power as your 3.0 V6, and much more efficiently, so they discontinued the 3.0.

To boost your mpg consider changing your rear axle ratio. Entire rear axles are plentiful and pretty cheap for a good used one. Rangerstation.com or .org or whatever has a good listing of all the available axles for these rigs.

Mine has a 3.73 but could stand a little higher ratio on the freeway. Fully loaded, going up my twisty 17% grade driveway in 1st it will just barely pull it from a rolling start under 1300 rpm, so I may just stick with it. Wish I had a dual range trans, one for haul mode and one for MPG mode.