Being the bigger diesel, I'd probably avoid the engine off P&G, the traffic on the main roads around here is pretty bad. I've had enough people about hit me when I was going 45mph in a 55mph in the corolla, now the road has even less passing room and such. It went from a 2 line state highway to a 2 lane with left turn lanes and a few right side lanes to pass people turning left, but they removed the option to pass slower traffic. In the main town area the same setup is in town, and they just extended it out about a mile for no real reason, there's no businesses or anything that far out.
Sadly I don't have a garage yet to park vehicles in, so don't really have a solid way to remove a topper easily. For the wood hauling, generally my family runs racks and stacks the wood to the cab height or higher, doesn't matter if it's a little Toyota pickup, mid sized T100, F150, or F250 lol.
I haven't seen any hybrid diesels, are they a thing with the auto kill/start like the gas versions? I thought the hybrids put out electrical power to get the vehicle up to speed with less load on the engine (less efficient), then while cursing down the road and brake regen the battery is recharged for the next takeoff. Maybe the newer ones do some different things, I haven't been super active on this site for like 6-8 years.
I think the theory of the engine rpm is a bit backwards for a diesel, the only difference between idle and full throttle is how much fuel is being dumped, there's no throttle plate to cause pumping losses. I'm not sure 100% how the turbo would play into this though since it's an exhaust restriction, but it crams more air into the cylinder for a more violent dentition. Of course this is purely talking about the core engine, accessories clearly would have higher losses at higher rpm.
It would be interesting to test changing the belt to only run the water pump and alt and get an electric vacuum pump for the brakes.
I've messed around a little with the engine off coating with a Camry (mid sized car) and a Corolla (smaller/budget car) and they are no big deal. The truck though, the steering is very hard, not sure if the brake system holds vacuum well or not with engine off. The Toyota's get 2-3 brake hits before it runs out of assistance. The 2001 F250 I flat towed home and the brakes (rusty but not that bad) was barely enough to stop the actual truck against the truck in front coating in neutral (heavier so it seems to coast farther, doubt it's from low rolling resistant tires).
An areo topper might be doable, been thinking a bit on it and since I use side racks for hauling more stuff, if they were shaped to match the cab angle and taper down at a reasonable rate, I'd think it would help slightly. It's already a brick in the air so I think areo mods would be more effective on it than the corolla - passenger mirror delete, mud flap delete, the front end covering, and belly pan, and flat hub caps might have given me 3-5mpg while driving style and tires up to max pressure seemed to give the best gains, 33mpg on the trip home 60mph for ~2hr vs ~39mpg for the same speed with the areo mods and fixed alignment, tires, etc.
I don't have any good photos of the front of the truck, or a solid side profile yet, but the front bumper is a fair bit shaped like an air dam already, it extends down a bit more than I normally build them.
Probably should mention my dad and I both can weld, and my dad was an ASE cert mechanic so I do all repairs on my own or with his help.
For the gearing, I think 3.55 is pretty reasonable for the truck, the overdrive in the transmission is 0.71, so that comes out to 1500rpm for 55mph and 2000rpm for 70mph. The engine red lines around 3250-3500 according to the tach, idle is around 450rpm. It's first gear is basically a creeper gear, so even with the somewhat higher geared axles, it has plenty of gearing for starting off with a pretty good sized load I'd think. The toyota I'm running is 4.10 gearing and with the v6 engine it can struggle a bit taking off, it really could use a creeper gear type of setup. I haven't done it yet, but in theory I could drop it in low range and get to say 2nd gear then swap to 1st gear high range, that truck can be shifted into and out of 4x4 while moving, into low max speed 5mph, into high any speed, and into 4x4 from 2wd 50mph. Have to love owner's manuals. I think the ford manual will say either stopped or under 5mph but I haven't looked for one online yet, the truck didn't come with the manual.
Also I plan to remove the hub caps, they don't look like they are too areo, they are fairly heavy, and the valve stem is hard to get to with them on.
I'm thinking making atleast a short belly pan for the front and seal up the hood a little would be a good benefit since diesels generally don't like the cold, there is excess heat from the turbo that I have to be careful about though so the back side will be the vent for the air that makes it through the radiator.
I'm also reading about the 50mph diesel truck thread to get more ideas. Sounds like 70-80% of the mileage is purely driving style and slow average speed ~30mph. I have nearly zero city driving as I live far out in the country, and when I do go into town, the city driving aspect is about 1-2 miles long. No stop and go traffic, and generally I don't get stuck at the lights more than once.
Anyway, back to that other thread, he mentions about unplugging a heater for quicker warm ups, it's an EGR truck, mine didn't have any of that stuff though. I know the newer truck has a waste gate and it has some sort of exhaust brake setup that helps warm the engine up faster while lowering power to the wheels, I think that truck has some sort of heater system on the turbo area too, not sure what that's for, but if there's any heaters, 100-200amp heater delete would probably be quite a mpg increase I'd think. The mention of his heater is at post #57.
https://ecomodder.com/forum/showthre...tml#post365990
Btw, I went to school for computers, and I've played a little with programming micro controllers. I have a reasonable understanding of electronics (the actual circuits), so I'm keeping that in mind too while thinking of mods. This engine doesn't have much electrical going on with it though, the newer one has a ton of stuff I'm wanting to look into.
I've also been seeing people mention that mufflers on a diesel only makes them get worse mpg, I'm not one to have loud exhaust though (the turbo might be enough, not sure). Pretty sure it still has the factory exhaust, looked to be about 3in. I didn't look over the whole system much, but I remember seeing a muffler. Maybe a cherry bomb style muffler would be the best of both worlds (center wide open, packing material around the outside muffles it a little).
A bit of a side topic, if that 2001 we can't get going within a reasonable budget, it might have some pretty major mods. 2000 Tundra cab (4 door but shorter), custom box (oem one is rusted to nothing). The engine/trans would likely end up being the 2000 Tundra engine, 4.7L v8 gas with auto trans. It would be a bit on the high geared side for the engine/truck since the axles are 3.73 and the Toyota generally comes with around 4.10 gearing. Low range as a creeper gear, I think it would work fairly well. The cab on those trucks are a lot shorter than the fords, a bit narrower and such so I'd think it would do pretty well. I'm looking at hauling ~10,000lbs once in a while, and that's just a bit much for the stock tundra for that era, probably would do it but the suspension, axle, and maybe frame are a bit light duty for that. We've came up with a name for it already if that happened - Tord (TOyota + foRD). Toyota has great engines and electronics, and fords have great axles and frames.
I wish I had photos, but back in the 90's my dad built a truck out of a ton of different parts and made a truck he called the "Ka-truck", it was half "car" and half "truck". Cab was a station wagon front end made into a cab, frame was a heavy 3/4 ton chevy, heavy 3/4 ton rear axle with dually adapter, and powered by an oldsmobile 350 v8. 4.10 gearing, automatic, home made box (very heavy), and home made pipe front bumper. He literately pushed junk cars sideways around the yard. He wrecked the truck into a big pine tree one night, so that truck is long gone, but he still misses it lol. Back then he was a scrapper, lived off scrapping metal. $20/ton and vehicles were either free or the owner would pay a little to get rid of it. If it was something desirable, he might pay $20-50 for it. He had a small collection of Oldsmobile Cutlass cars 1969-1974 era until the township got on him for having too many vehicles in the yard (no junkyard license). The ordnance was changed, before it was fine for unlicensed vehicles to sit behind a fence out of sight from the road, now they want every vehicle to have an active plate or insurance, whichever one. I live a township over and it's no problem here. I like having a parts vehicle encase I need a part, no wait and no running to the store, just have to do the job twice to get it out and put it in the other vehicle.
Anyway, back to some work (self employed) and reading a bit more on that other thread.