bought a truck

[VetteOwner]

oooh nice! i would not scratch those. i have some chrome american racing rims on my s-10 and they are a PITA to keep from getting a tiny cip and then they rust...so i gotta keep cleaning them and putting wax on them to keep em clean...i take them off in the winter and put my winter stock tires back on so salt dosnt really screw em up

[GasSavers_James]

Congrats, those are nice trucks. You should be able to get 23 MPG. I would stay around 55 on the highway if possible. It is a nice engine for very low RPM cruising. I have not gone through all of the ignition/o2 stuff on mine yet (92 1500 W/T with 4.3 and 5spd), and I got 22-23 on my first two tanks, although after filling up I have had a tendency to let her sit there. I was trying to buy land and the deal fell thru, so there is no work for the truck. I don't think I've driven it in a month. Soon I am going to have to drive it to work just to charge the battery.

[jwxr7]

Thanks,
When I do drive it I never go over 60 mph on the highway and 50 or less on rural roads.

I noticed it's probably a good candidate for an electric fan conversion. The stock belt driven one is quite loud so it is no doubt wasting lots of energy. It would be nice if the ecu already had an unused output for an e-fan relay.

[Hockey4mnhs]

so you haul wood alot? we can run our house on all wood in the winter so we to haul wood a little bit. how much do you go threw a year?

[jwxr7]

We have propane boiler heat and a Lopi woodburning insert. I try to burn as much wood as I can when I'm home (doesn't work well unattended). This last winter we went thru just over nine face cords. Probably the same last year. I am usually limited by my wood supply but not this year for a first. I usually end up having to drive a ways to get what ever wood I can get. I don't have a reliable source yet . I try to go a full year between propane fills. I estimate we are using less than one third of the propane we would otherwise use without the help of wood heat .

[Hockey4mnhs]

yeah we used around 5 which isnt bad. our house is around 4500sq feet so idk how good that is. we do run our heat a little when we are lazy but its a heat pump so its still not to bad. idk what our fireplace is called but it is connected to the heatpump/central air so we just set a temp and turn on the fan and make a big fire and it does the rest.

[jwxr7]

wow, that's a big house . I heat about 2500 sqft and think it's too big. Unfortunately my wood burner isn't tied to my central heat so I have to try blowing it around some. I do dream about putting a hot water coil in the woodburner and tying it thru an unused zone to my central heat boiler .

[jwxr7]

I just got my scangauge 2 for this beast. I wish I could use it in the metro . How far off could the scangauge be if I don't ever fill-up to verify the gallons used? I just drove it to work on the highway and averaged 22.5 mpg (driving normal for a base line). The ave speed seemed low at 37 mph but mph read out agreed with my speedo whenever I checked it. It seems like it should have been closer to 45 mph (30 min to go 22 miles or so). It took a couple miles to reach closed loop and idle uses about .4 gal/hr. My wifes taurus went into closed loop with-in like 20 seconds just idling .

[GasSavers_James]

I am pretty sure these trucks have a clutch on the fan so it does not take too much extra energy to spin when not needed. I do notice the fan is loud while the engine is warming up, i don't know why.

[Mentalic]

Originally Posted by James

I am pretty sure these trucks have a clutch on the fan so it does not take too much extra energy to spin when not needed. I do notice the fan is loud while the engine is warming up, i don't know why.

I've got a thermostatic fan clutch on my 4 Runner that does the same thing when you first start it up. The reason is the fan clutch is sorta like a torque converter with just a bit of silicone oil in it. So when it sits the oil collects at the bottom and gets a good grip on the torque plates. Shortly after it spins up for a bit the oil spreads out and slips much more.