Gas mileageon the 4.7 sucks!

02blkram47 said:

I warm my truck up for at least 20 minutes before I get in.

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20 minutes is a long time and a lot of wasted gas.

Yeah, it doesn't need to be warmed for 20 minutes. A little but of over kill, just don't hop in, start it up, and drive away right away on a cold day.

BlackedOutHemi said:

Yeah, it doesn't need to be warmed for 20 minutes. A little but of over kill, just don't hop in, start it up, and drive away right away on a cold day.

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Really what happens? mine is garage kept so fire it up and roll out every morning, the weather gets cold here. So am i doing something wrong?

Ive heard that you should let it warm up some, but I never do. How long do most of you usually wait?

Should be fine. Just always have heard it's better to let it warm up, and to not just get in it and start romping on it. I could be wrong, but its just what I've been told. Normally start mine (remote start helps) as I'm walking downstairs to leave. So, maybe 2 minutes at most for me?

TexasRammer said:

Ive heard that you should let it warm up some, but I never do. How long do most of you usually wait?

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usually you want the needle to have moved at least a little bit off cold.... i usually let mine warm up for about 5 min

Well maybe 20 minutes might be a little stretch but on days like this morning when it was 16 degrees outside I waited nearly 20 minutes and the temp was barely off cold and no where near operating temp. Most day I'm in it and going within 10-15.

^^ sounds good! Better to be safe than sorry

I never warm mine up before I drive. Start and go from our 110 summer to 0 degree winter she starts and runs.

try putting on a new fuel filter while your at it

Oefootball_70 said:

I never warm mine up before I drive. Start and go from our 110 summer to 0 degree winter she starts and runs.

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Wow that is death to a vehicle all metals warm up differently I would say bare minimum should be 5 minutes in cold weather and a minute or so in summer.

I will argue this till the death. You will save gas until your truck is trashed.

If you do not warm up your vehicle in dead of winter here it will barely move.

$miley

Why not plug in the block heater and cut down that warmup time !
Works in Canada for me

I would but no place to plug in at work for me. I am sure that others have same issue.

$miley

Ridgeram said:

Why not plug in the block heater and cut down that warmup time !
Works in Canada for me

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I don't think I have a block heater.

Damn my 3.7 gets about the same mpg as yours does. I love this truck but i have had 2 GM products that had 6cyls in them and they both got over 30 mpg's. I cant figure this out at all! avg about 15 with my ram

My 08 quad 2WD 4.7 has gotten a best of 18.10 and worst of 13.85. My average is 16.07. This is based on fillups and logging in a droid app. This has been over 9305 miles and 169 days...so lots of highway. I'm now at 25k miles.

So yours does sound low.

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mikehutch said:

My 08 quad 2WD 4.7 has gotten a best of 18.10 and worst of 13.85. My average is 16.07. This is based on fillups and logging in a droid app. This has been over 9305 miles and 169 days...so lots of highway. I'm now at 25k miles.

So yours does sound low.

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what driod app are you using? Yeah i think I'm pretty low. once I do the plugs and fluids maybe the fuel filter I'll keep checking it to see if it improves.

I'm using fuellog now. Multiple veh, easy entry, stats and graph.

Enter odometer, gals and cost per gal. Scary to see the fuel cost total for all entries.

Was using mileage something but they did an update that removed the graph feature and deleted all my data....so I responded by deleting it.

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fuelly is another good one.. you can text (SMS) info to it, as well, and it stores it all online.


As for your economy, that seems to be the average, as others have said, maybe slightly lower. a 20min idle time is 20 minutes of run time at zero mph and zero miles..
Figure over the course of a week (5 days), you let it idle 15min each morning.. that's 1h15m of idle time in warmups, alone. If you hit alot of stoplights throughout the day, figure ~2min each red light.. If you hit 30 stoplights in a week, there's another hour..

A diesel will idle forever and hardly use any fuel. I plow snow, and while plowing, I am generally somewhere between idle and 1500rpm. I can plow for 5hrs, and use less than 1/4 tank of fuel (24gal tank.) I can drive highway at 65mph for 5 hrs and use about 12-13 gallons.

Dad's 4.7L, at 68mph, gets around 16mpg on the highway.

Letting an engine sit and idle is not good, as there's unburned fuel being passed, and the cat converter (gas engine) doesn't get hot enough to burn these vapors. Also, the O2 sensor has trouble correcting for stoich.


HERE'S THE RULE OF THUMB: If you're in a drive-through restaurant/business line or waiting for someone and you'll be parked and sitting for 10 seconds or longer... turn off your car's engine.

Why??

For every two minutes a car is idling, it uses about the same amount of fuel it takes to go about one mile. Research indicates that the average person idles their car five to 10 minutes a day. People usually idle their cars more in the winter than in the summer. But even in winter, you don't need to let your car sit and idle for five minutes to "warm it up" when 30 seconds will do just fine.

But you're not going anywhere. Idling gets ZERO miles per gallon.

The recommendation is: If you are going to be parked for more than 30 seconds, turn off the engine. Ten seconds of idling can use more fuel than turning off the engine and restarting it. And when you start your engine, don't step down on the accelerator, just simply turn the key to start.

An alternative to idling is to park your car, walk inside, do your business and then go back to your car.

Here are some other Myths associated with idling.

Myth #1: The engine should be warmed up before driving. Reality: Idling is not an effective way to warm up your vehicle, even in cold weather. The best way to do this is to drive the vehicle. With today's modern engines, you need no more than 30 seconds of idling on winter days before driving away.

Myth #2: Idling is good for your engine. Reality: Excessive idling can actually damage your engine components, including cylinders, spark plugs, and exhaust systems. Fuel is only partially combusted when idling because an engine does not operate at its peak temperature. This leads to the build up of fuel residues on cylinder walls that can damage engine components and increase fuel consumption.

Myth #3: Shutting off and restarting your vehicle is hard on the engine and uses more gas than if you leave it running. Reality: Frequent restarting has little impact on engine components like the battery and the starter motor. Component wear caused by restarting the engine is estimated to add $10 per year to the cost of driving, money that will likely be recovered several times over in fuel savings from reduced idling. The bottom line is that more than ten seconds of idling uses more fuel than restarting the engine.

Idling Your Car

Another good mythbuster on regular vs premium fuels..
Regular Versus Premium Gasoline

Wow that's allot of information. But great thank you. Aside from the warm up time which may be excessive but I hate getting in a cold truck, I only have a total of two stop lights on my way to work and usually don't hit them on red often. I'm okay with low in town MPG because that's the nature of big trucks but to be driving all interstate from NH to CT down and back over 5 hours of constant go driving between 68-70mph and only average 13.5 MPG? Something is wrong there. If I were at 16 like others are saying then I'm a happy guy.