MPG: Ranger vs F150

CoreyHendo

New member
I'm building a Ranger as an expo/overland rig now. Stock, FX4 trim, I was seeing 21'ish at 75-80 MPH on the highway. Hard to complain too much about that. Now that I've added larger tires, a small amount of weight and more wind resistance, my MPG's are 16-17 at 70 MPH, dropping off to the 15-16 range at 75-80 MPH. But, if I find myself driving 70+ in the mountains, pushing a head wind, I drop to below 10. The truck has a ton of power and cruises along just fine but it stays in the boost non-stop under certain conditions and fuel economy plummets.

I'm hoping that gearing (when it becomes available) will help bring the MPG's up again. I don't commute and really only drive the rig for travel/adventure so fuel costs are not a primary concern but range is abysmal and as it stands I desperately need a long range fuel tank.

YMMV :D
After installing the larger tires, did you adjust the speedo using FORSCAN or other means? if not, your odometer will be off and the calculations will be off, too.

I got about 20 completely stock with my stock FX4. When I went to 287/75/17 Nitto Ridge Grapplers, I dropped to 17-ish (speedo calibrated and corrected using GPS/FORSCAN). I have the Omega tune from OZ Tuning and my fuel mileage is back up to about 20. I actually saw my highest MPG ever the other day at 21.3 mpg.
 

Err

Observer
After installing the larger tires, did you adjust the speedo using FORSCAN or other means? if not, your odometer will be off and the calculations will be off, too.

I got about 20 completely stock with my stock FX4. When I went to 287/75/17 Nitto Ridge Grapplers, I dropped to 17-ish (speedo calibrated and corrected using GPS/FORSCAN). I have the Omega tune from OZ Tuning and my fuel mileage is back up to about 20. I actually saw my highest MPG ever the other day at 21.3 mpg.

Good question. Yeah, I'm running the Ford Performance Tune now that I'm on 35's. My truck has a ton of additional mods as well so it's not just a straight swap to 35's. The Ford Performance tune includes the ability to calibrate for tire size and gearing and mine is configured for my setup.

I've seen high teens on level roads at around 70'ish but nothing over 20. Maybe the Omega tune is a great option for those trying to eek out fuel economy.
 

CoreyHendo

New member
Good question. Yeah, I'm running the Ford Performance Tune now that I'm on 35's. My truck has a ton of additional mods as well so it's not just a straight swap to 35's. The Ford Performance tune includes the ability to calibrate for tire size and gearing and mine is configured for my setup.

I've seen high teens on level roads at around 70'ish but nothing over 20. Maybe the Omega tune is a great option for those trying to eek out fuel economy.
When I was first researching a tune, the FP Tune didn't allow for towing and wouldn't allow tire size adjustment to larger than about 33" tires. After numerous emails back and forth with the FP engineers, they finally "adjusted" the tune and now it they say towing is fine.

I think the OZ Tuning Omega tune has the best transmission tune/logic based on my experiences with OZ, 5-Star, and Livernois. It fixes the skip shift logic used by the factory Ford setup and is much smoother for it.
 

Err

Observer
Yeah, took them quite a while to get the tire size and gearing adjustment in there.

Stock, the transmission tuning is incredibly, almost inconceivably poor. Lugging, weird shifting, never in the right gear. I'm pretty darn happy with the FP tune so far but haven't tried any of the other options.
 

calicamper

Expedition Leader
My bare Tule round bars are a 1-2mpg hit on a stock 2019 Expedition with heavy tow pack. My old Sequoia and J80 never noticed them. This 1-2mpg hit at highway speeds is in alignment with the cars I have run the bars on. These modern trucks especially with the 10spd are pretty slippery in stock form. Once you dump the lower air dam add knobby tires and a few exterior body parts a 5 mpg hit or more isn’t a big surprise.
 

calicamper

Expedition Leader
Off topic, but I swear my Yakima Jetstream bars had almost zero effect on mpg compared to round bars. Plus, much less noise.
Yep the new aero bars are way better than the cheap round bars used 20 yrs ago. I just have too much gear tied to the round bar that still works?
 

Grassland

Well-known member
We can not drive our ranger below 18l/100km mostly city traffic. Couple of things that bug me on it but overall a great vehicle.

about discounts when purchasing a truck: those times are long past!
Ouch.
That's abysmal fuel economy.
My 14 F150 got 16-17 in town when it was in fleet duty. Unless it was -20°C and colder then it got worse.
 

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