2007 GMC Canyon - It begins ;-)

[Longsnowsm]

I am one of those guys that needs a truck. I actually use my truck as a truck, but don't drive it unless I "need" the truck. It is amazing the amount of stuff I can shove in a Honda Insight! LOL

Well my old truck has been a long time source of issues. I keep pouring money into it seems like every time I turn around. Now is not an exception. It once again thinks it needs to see my mechanic. Well I have decided that it's gas guzzling days are numbered here after a long run and a lot of work done together.

So I am going to be flying out to WI this weekend to look at and probably pick up a 2007 GMC Canyon. I am stepping down from the full size Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 Crew Cab to a 2 wheel drive, 4 cylinder, 5 speed extended cab small/mid size truck.

So I wanted to post here and track my economy and the improvements to the truck over the next month or so. I am a modest hypermiler, and haven't done much in the way of Ecomod's, but have followed here on the forum for a long time. Trucks are a tough cookie to crack to get good economy from them, but as witnessed by some amazing drivers here on this forum it can be done. I don't plan any extreme mods for this truck, but will do some of the basics and try to track what each change does to the economy.

I will start off by picking up the truck in WI and driving it back to CO. I will track the economy of that trip. Only mods will be to air the tires up to max sidewall pressure, connect up the Ultragauge, and then hit the road looking to see where the maximum speed for the best MPG is found. I will try to log and keep track of the various road cases on the Interstate and log the fuel economy for a baseline for when I get it back home.

From there the planned changes immediately will be a new set of tires, and tonneau cover. I will try to make a few runs to log the differences between the mods over a known distance and route to see what the impact of the changes might be. From there I am considering a grill block and lower air dam extension and will track those changes. The rest of the changes will be adjusting the LOOSE NUT between the seat and the truck controls. The objective is to show that a small/mid size truck can be tuned to get decent mileage without having to do anything too extreme and keep the truck looking fairly stock. I am hoping I can squeak out 30mpg on the highway at a reasonable speed, and keep it near the mid 20's in town. That would be the goal here. Trying to keep the goals modest and within reach and hope for something better as we go. :-)

So wish me luck. I will keep posting here to let everyone know how it goes with the truck.

UPDATE: Here are some pictures of the changes as they are progressing. I cannot get them to post on this site for some reason, but here are the URL's. Please let me know if you cannot get to the pics.

So far tonneau cover on, and air dam built and installed:
Let's try it below by URL link:
https://goo.gl/photos/aajygtsdBRskQwmVA
https://goo.gl/photos/PxAgzACiHXXB7TPx7
https://goo.gl/photos/8z759aBbZ64ZsA2V8
https://goo.gl/photos/PsSzGJXQNBkeMDmA9
https://goo.gl/photos/E4DDmpsWJNZGm2YD9

Longsnowsm

[JRMichler]

Originally Posted by Longsnowsm

...probably pick up a 2007 GMC Canyon. I am stepping down from the full size Dodge Ram 1500 4x4 Crew Cab to a 2 wheel drive, 4 cylinder, 5 speed extended cab small/mid size truck.

I am hoping I can squeak out 30mpg on the highway at a reasonable speed,

That's about right for a stock Canyon at 55 MPH without a headwind. Pumping up the tires to about 50 PSI will help.

[Longsnowsm]

JRMichler, I hope your right, from your lips to God's ears! I have been lurking out on the 355Nation and on ColoradoFans and searching out fuel economy posts and it is frankly very depressing. This truck really doesn't look like it gets great economy out of the box from the factory and that is before folks go crazy lifting, tuning, changing, and driving it like they stole it. So I am getting a little nervous about the fuel economy from this truck. I guess I will find out soon enough what I am in for with this truck.

I am hoping that with a few mods like the tonneau, grill block, and lower dam that I will be able to stretch that out to about 30mpg at 60-65mph. I do a lot of highway miles when I have to use the truck so being able to stretch that fuel economy and cover some distance in a reasonable amount of time is the goal.

Since I am losing some carrying capacity with the smaller truck I am going to be looking into getting a small trailer that I can tow behind it for hauling and moving things that won't fit in the bed of the Canyon and give me some of the capacity to carry and move things back only when I need it. That is the game plan at the moment anyway.

I love your aero cap on your truck!

[JRMichler]

I once drove the company Colorado (same truck as the Canyon). It's an extended cab 5 cyl automatic with 4WD. Driving a steady 55 with almost all highway miles, and based on watching the gas gauge, I got about 30 MPG. These little trucks are capable of getting good mileage at 55 MPH or slower. Speed up to 65, and the mileage drops a good 20%.

My mod thread: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...yon-17070.html

[The Other Andy]

Originally Posted by Longsnowsm

JRMichler, I hope your right, from your lips to God's ears! I have been lurking out on the 355Nation and on ColoradoFans and searching out fuel economy posts and it is frankly very depressing. This truck really doesn't look like it gets great economy out of the box from the factory and that is before folks go crazy lifting, tuning, changing, and driving it like they stole it. So I am getting a little nervous about the fuel economy from this truck. I guess I will find out soon enough what I am in for with this truck.

I am hoping that with a few mods like the tonneau, grill block, and lower dam that I will be able to stretch that out to about 30mpg at 60-65mph. I do a lot of highway miles when I have to use the truck so being able to stretch that fuel economy and cover some distance in a reasonable amount of time is the goal.

Since I am losing some carrying capacity with the smaller truck I am going to be looking into getting a small trailer that I can tow behind it for hauling and moving things that won't fit in the bed of the Canyon and give me some of the capacity to carry and move things back only when I need it. That is the game plan at the moment anyway.

I love your aero cap on your truck!

1. Congrats! Those seem like spiffy little pickups, of the sort you won't find anymore.
2. Well they're truck owners, duh! Generally they have more money than sense (although I can see the appeal of a big truck, just not truck nuts).
3. Drop it like it's hot.

[Longsnowsm]

Originally Posted by JRMichler

I once drove the company Colorado (same truck as the Canyon). It's an extended cab 5 cyl automatic with 4WD. Driving a steady 55 with almost all highway miles, and based on watching the gas gauge, I got about 30 MPG. These little trucks are capable of getting good mileage at 55 MPH or slower. Speed up to 65, and the mileage drops a good 20%.

My mod thread: http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...yon-17070.html

Thanks JR! I have been reading your mod thread with great interest! I think I will follow your lead and bump up the tire size as well. Do you then manually calculate your mileage or did you have your truck flashed to adjust for the tire size change?

Is your truck an automatic or the manual?

[Longsnowsm]

Originally Posted by The Other Andy

1. Congrats! Those seem like spiffy little pickups, of the sort you won't find anymore.
2. Well they're truck owners, duh! Generally they have more money than sense (although I can see the appeal of a big truck, just not truck nuts).
3. Drop it like it's hot.

Thanks, I was looking for the most efficient truck possible to replace my big gas guzzler. So I was actually looking for a Ford Ranger in the configuration I wanted, 4 cyl, 5 speed, extended cab, 4x2, taller gear, limited slip, and towing package, and with a reasonable number of miles on it... Well it turns out that is a tall order! And I wasn't able to find one locally or in a long distance search. If I did find one the cost was outside of what I am able to spend.

So I started broadening the search and stumbled on the Chevy/GMC trucks. So far I don't think it looks like they will get anywhere near what the Ranger will for fuel economy, but it looks like an acceptable compromise. I was able to find the combination of things I was looking for at a price I could afford so now I have to go get it... I again could not find one locally which really stinks. But I do get to road trip it home and baseline how it performs, so that part is fun!

Yes, the truck forums are frustrating at times. They don't have the same focus that I do. I need a truck to be a truck, and I need it to do so as efficiently as possible. Getting that kind of info is hard. People think they need more than they do. My needs are modest, but modesty in the vehicle market seems to be missing... :-)

[Longsnowsm]

Well I bought the truck and got it home Sunday. The wheels on the truck are not the OEM wheels so the wheel size is larger than the stock wheels. They are still a GMC wheel, but I don't think those were offered on this truck. It is a 16" wheel. The dealer decided to put new tires on it for me and chose a 235/70R16 which is slightly larger than the tire that I was going to put on the truck in a 225/75R15. However this worked out well as the 16" tire he chose is slightly taller than the tires I was going to put on it and that made it great for highway driving.

Now the results so far after 2 tanks, and haven't calculated the 3rd tank yet as I didn't fill up yet. But it looks like the factor to use with the larger tire is 1.0833 multiplier so my first tank was 27.44 mpg at 65 mph(per gps) with the cruise control on. The second tank it looks like 26.09 mpg with some cruise control, and some drafting, but I did run into some cross and headwinds. On the last tank which I haven't calculated I got into a bunch of construction, some bad weather, and a tailwind so I think the economy will be higher on this last tank, but I won't know until I go and do the fill up.

So I am pretty happy. The max sidewall on the new tires is 50 psi so that is what I set them to for this trip. At 65-66 mph per the GPS the tach is telling me about 2150 rpm. The truck has plenty of power and drives pretty nice for a truck.

So my tires upgrade was done for me, and not the tire I would have chosen, but I am pretty happy about getting new tires out of the deal. Just gives me some money to get my bed cover sooner and to get some of the things that need to be done on the truck completed like the fluids change in the rear diff, transmission, and the engine oils and bypass filter installed. So just have to take it one step at a time.

If this truck keeps getting this kind of mileage it will be a nice improvement over the 1500 Dodge. I am hoping that with the bed cover, grill block, and lower air dam extension that I can get this really close to 30 mpg on the highway at 65 mph. Since that is 3-4 mpg higher than my current economy I am very hopeful that I can get there and that would be my objective with the truck. If I can get more than that out of the truck it would just be icing on the cake.

I will post more updates and results as I get more data and make the changes.

[Longsnowsm]

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.

[josh27]

What a great first post for me. I also drive a 08' Colorado reg cab with the 4cyl/5sp. I dont do this all the time but when i do, I can consistently get 31-34 mpg on my commute on the days I decide to go 55 mph on the freeway. It also involves coasting as much as i can in neutral. slow take off and plenty of time to stop to a light. I have 18x9 wheels with 275's on all fours. 3/4 drop and an intake. Like you, I want to get a cover for the bed and grill block. and perhaps an extension to the airdam. My wheels poke out about a good 1.5-2 inches past the body.