High MPG work truck

[oil pan 4]

My shutter stat came in, its 170'F unit.
I would have liked a 190'F or 180'F degree shutter stat but not for $100.
For $26 I can't complain.

[naturalextraction]

Thanks for the link...I'll be perusing through that later tonight. Good idea with the oil cooler valving or restricting for winter use. Control of ambient and environmental heat where you can will fine tune overall operational efficiencies. Basically the best is to raise adiabatic efficiencies. A book you absolutely have to at least flip through is called "The Romance of Engine" so here's a link: The Romance of Engines - Takashi Suzuki - Google Books
Hino trucks had made some amazing breakthrough in diesel technology while Takashi was there. I guarantee you will learn some interesting ideas to implement. You've done a bunch of great improvements already. Again thanks for the link.

[oil pan 4]

The oil cooler I am using is fairly common, I believe it was used as a transmission cooler in the 1990s chevy lumnia.I think under light load in the cold they over cool the engine and I know there is no way to stop the oil flow. Then under heavy load they are just not big enough to dump much heat into a hot 110'F environment.
In the cold, it will be shut off. Under heavy load it will be backed up by the original in radiator heat exchanger.

[oil pan 4]

I have not updated in a while and I see its still getting views.

My latest and greatest mod was my 9'' lawn edging and aluminum air dam.
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...dam-26600.html

Picked up about 1mpg with it. The easiest MPG I have picked up in a long time. Wish I would have built it a long time ago.

[xterracanuck]

In the middle of a road trip and reading this right now as my GF drives. Having just filled up, I'm very encouraged by your thread. My Xterra is a brick on wheels!

[owly]

Direct personal experience with diesels has shown me that high compression is one key, and good atomization another. NON TURBO engines with very high compression ratio, and undersize injector tips beat everything else. Turbos are designed to achieve higher power, and of course must be used with a lower compression ratio to stay within limits. Unfortunately boost is proportional to how much power you are pulling out of the engine, so we run a pretty low boost when loafing down the highway at low throttle........where we measure mileage. The turbo inherently robs power due to back pressure, and it adds complexity to the system. You want max efficiency....... us a non-turbo engine. Small injector tips result in far smaller droplet size for a given fuel flow than large tips......... This is very significant. With diesels, power mods work against efficiency as a rule. I once set out to build the most efficient diesel I could to run a pump feeding a 1/4 mile wheel line sprinkler. The resulting unit burns about half what any other diesel running the same load does. It involved a lot of research to achieve the most efficient pump for the job to begin with....... About $3000+. It had to be matched to the engine RPM and horsepower. The engine was an Isuzu Thermo King unit from a truck reefer. Rated at 18 HP in that configuration, it is also used in Isuzu pickups at about 50 HP. I left the small pump and injectors on it.........but had them rebuilt, and had the pump stroked out to max, which with the small pump delivered enough fuel for about 35 HP......... At full power, the injectors are operating well beyond design capacity, but you only operate at that horsepower while filling the lines. Operating load is about 22 HP, and the engine burns .7 gallons per hour, or a little less than 17 gallons per 24 hrs.
These things have been known since the 20's.......... I have a book from about 1930. Diesel Engines by Von Bongart that goes into great detail, studies injection systems, compression ratio, chamber design, etc..........The principles outlined in it guided the entire project, and the results very much confirmed the principles. The engine is now approaching 20,000 hours total on the Hobbs meter, and still pumps water with the same level of efficiency!!

Howard

[Joggernot]

Just checked. The book, 1938, is available through Amazon for $11.99 used.

[oil pan 4]

The addition of my holset turbocharger boosted my mpg by 2 to 2.5 mpg and gave me tons of power.
The addition of my second turbocharger and intercooler added less than 1 mpg (more like a half MPG), it did not hurt MPGs but did increase drive ability.
They may hurt the diesel engine efficiency by its self but the over all system efficiency is higher.
You can get better MPGs from mods that give you more power, bigger free flowing intake or ram air intake will boost power and wont hurt MPGs (unless its very cold out). Big straight pipe exhaust on a turbodiesel helps too. A bigger more freely flowing shorter over all length exhaust did not appear to help MPGs back when I was running N/A and I wasn't expecting it to.
A turbocharger that has a 20 or 30 year newer design wont hurt anything.
I turned up my injector pump rate screw back in 2008 and MPGs were unchanged so long as I kept my foot out of it.

[owly]

Originally Posted by oil pan 4

The addition of my holset turbocharger boosted my mpg by 2 to 2.5 mpg and gave me tons of power.
The addition of my second turbocharger and intercooler added less than 1 mpg (more like a half MPG), it did not hurt MPGs but did increase drive ability.
They may hurt the diesel engine efficiency by its self but the over all system efficiency is higher.
You can get better MPGs from mods that give you more power, bigger free flowing intake or ram air intake will boost power and wont hurt MPGs (unless its very cold out). Big straight pipe exhaust on a turbodiesel helps too. A bigger more freely flowing shorter over all length exhaust did not appear to help MPGs back when I was running N/A and I wasn't expecting it to.
A turbocharger that has a 20 or 30 year newer design wont hurt anything.
I turned up my injector pump rate screw back in 2008 and MPGs were unchanged so long as I kept my foot out of it.

Let me point out that you ADDED a turbo.......... The Holset turbo kit didn't include low compression pistons........ did it? Factory turbo installations involved lowering compression ratio to stay within their parameters for head bolts and gaskets. They also include large nozzle injectors. Both of these HURT fuel economy. I personally would not put a turbo on a non-turbo engine. Having worked on diesels a great deal over the last 30 years, I've seen many of the internal changes that are used with factory installations. One such change is often a system which squirts a stream of oil through a nozzle carefully designed to bath the under side of the piston, as well as a larger oil cooler.

I don't disagree that many mods that give more power do not hurt MPG and may even help. You can fiddle around to make your pump deliver more fuel....... as you mentioned, and it will have no effect.......... It's the "nut behind the wheel" that costs fuel in that case. As long as you don't put larger injectors in, it will have no effect at cruise. Boost on an engine without lowering compression ratio as the factory does helps up to a point..... Diesels are mixture sensitive also, so there is a point of diminishing returns. Modern highly pumped up Cummins electronic engines produce vastly more power, and produce it at a higher efficiency......... But most folks get poorer mileage just idling down the road. You gain efficiency when pulling a big load.........but if you spend most of your time "loafing' down the road, you lose. It's just like we see with those high performance cams we used to play with......... you gain on one end........ lose on the other. Thus far I haven't read of anybody here who's trying to measure mileage based on pulling 20,000 down the highway on a gooseneck trailer............. Everybody is measuring mileage hauling their solitary butt down the highway!

[oil pan 4]

Holset turbo kit?
HA! I wish.
My turbo came from a craigs list add, the exhaust piping came from the stainless steel pile at the scrap yard. The only kit I bought was a so called 3'' "universal fit" aluminum pipe and intercooler kit, which I had to cut, weld and buy additional pieces for.

I specifically searched out a 6.5L #506 block because it had piston oil squirters.
Its a turbo short block with non turbo heads and injection parts.

For a time there was a dealer option to have the dealership install a factory approved banks turbo kit on new non-turbo 6.2L trucks, doing so didn't involve taking apart the long block, it also didn't void the warranty.
Banks used fuelling and a big non waste gated turbo to limit boost to about 8psi.

A larger oil cooler?
Done:
Question: Turbo charging a turbocharger - Page 20 - Diesel Place : Chevrolet and GMC Diesel Truck Forums
Along with a transmission cooler that is nothing less than extreme over kill.
I should add that the factory approved aftermarket turbo kit didn't include any additional engine oil or transmission cooling.

As far as "hauling their solitary butt down the highway!"
Stripped and bare my suburban weighs in at about 5800lb.
Minimum tool load with spare tire kicks the weight up to about 6200.
Add my empty trailer, +300lb.
I know this from going over the scales at the scrap yard in those various configurations.
Any highway trip I go on will have the minimum tool load at the very least, if there is no requirement for a trailer or minimum tool load then I take the car.

Edit: since this post I have:
-Dumped 200lb of scrap off at the scrap yard
-Bought 1200lb of steel from the scrap yard (900lb one trip, 300lb the next )
-Hauled 2 trailer loads of fire wood
-Bought a bunch of 12 foot length 2x10s and deck planks.
-Moved (some one else)
All while equipped with the "minimum tool load".