Summer Trip, Work, and Mileage

[Alex C]

So this summer, im planning on taking a few trips here and there. One of them is from South Florida (home) to visit my sister in austin, TX...Brother in St Louis, MO., Jacksonhole Wyoming for polo season, and a friend of mine that competes in the rodeo circuits so she could be anywhere from oklahoma to Kansas, TN, or whereever. I'm looking for the best ways of increasing my fuel mileage for these trips. I have an 04 F250 with the 6.0 and auto. 4x4, 3.73s, 4" lift, 35/13.00/18s, ranch hand bumper, diablosport programmer, intake, straight through exhaust, and thats about it. Obviously things like the ranch hand bumper, and tires make a HUGE difference and decrease my milage significantly. As for the lift, I have been reading posts about people dropping their trucks but leaving their 35s and noticing really no significant highway mileage increase. Perhaps i should just leave my lift and bumper and swap on my 285/75/16s and not fool with the lift?

I really dont feel the need to pull my lift off. Although, i was thinking about going a different direction with my truck and lowering it all little bit, dropping in a suncoast transmission and build it for speed and mileage.

During the day, im a contractor so i'm occasionally hooking up to a trailer and i do a lot of driving. With mileage in mind, this is hurting my pocket book a little bit.

any ideas? I mean, afterall i do drive a 8,500 lb truck, so at the end of the day, i understand its not gonna be getting mileage like those death trap smart cars (coffin on wheels). Are there any additives that actually work? is propane a waste of my time? ect...

Thanks for ideas or suggestions..

Alex

[Seminolewind]

I think if you drop the tires and run a set of 285's you would see a significant increase in mileage.

[JBakerFX4]

Tires seem to make a huge difference in MPG's. I lost about 2 - 3 mpg's going from OEM 275 20" tires to 35x12.50 Procomp Xtreme AT. they are one beefy, deep tread, heavy MoFo, but a nice quite good ride they do give..