08 F550 37' Bucket Truck

[08F550]

Hey guys and gals! I am new to the site and have found a bunch of great info. I have a company truck that is an 08 f550 37' bucket truck and I'm trying to get the best MPG's out of it. It has about 55000 miles on it and weighs in at a staggering 13,550 lbs on the scale . Looks like I am getting around 8.5-9.5 mpg with a combo of city/hwy driving. What is the best cheapest mod I could do to help this out and maybe, just maybe get a little more power out of it? Thanks!!

Brant

[superduty6.4]

Welcome to the forum. Deleting the dpf & getting a tuner will be the main thing to do if you're looking for more power and a little better mpg. Spartan and H&S are the 2 most popular tuners with sct in there a bit too. You may be able to find something in the classifieds used so you are looking probably 600 minimum. Maybe you could find an xrt pro H&S with a delete pipe. On 250 and 350's the improvement is 10-20% with 20 being high but it depends on how you drive. I'm not to sure how much improvement you would see on a 550 though.

[blackcloud2k]

The tall gears and weight of your truck are going to make MPG's suffer no matter what. From what I have read, the 450 and 550 guys are only seeing a 5-10% increase in MPG's after tuning because of the gearing. Some have helped that buy going with a taller tire. But as superduty 6.4 said, spartan and H&S are the two big tuners. KEM makes nice custom tunes that can be added on. I personally run KEM tunes and love them.

[Doss]

Yep, you're fighting several things here in the MPG department.

Gearing is not going to be great for highway driving (unless for some reason you have 3.73s... which I highly doubt). Adding a taller would help, but that's an expensive proposition on a dually with 19.5s. If you have the 17s, there may be hope, but I don't know enough about tires for these load ratings to tell you anything useful.

A tuner, airbox (intake), and DPF delete will probably help. But, there are some serious issues that are going to keep this from being a Honda Civic.

The other big problem you face is mass. The weight that you're moving around is detrimental to MPGs. It's not terrible when on the highway, but when you're in stop-and-go, it has to be a serious negative. I don't think there's much you can do about that.

The next is drag. On the highway, I'm going to go ahead and assume this thing cuts through the air much like a house. Reduce speeds is all I can offer there.

Increase the tire pressure as much as you can and keep your foot out of the boost.