Which Truck Has better Fuel Economy

[ejstrickland]

I am needing to get rid of the Goodyear Wrangler stock tires that came with my 2013 Eco-boost. They are horrible in the snow. I am thinking about going with some aggressive looking Hankook tires that I heard a lot of good performance things about.

Any thoughts on tires? I don't want to spend a fortune, and don't think I need too.

[trollbait]

Generally, aggressive tread on truck tires will lower fuel economy. I know it is a PITA, but have you tried playing around with the tire pressure to improve the snow traction?

If you want to save some cash on tires, look into retreads.

[ejstrickland]

Originally Posted by trollbait

Generally, aggressive tread on truck tires will lower fuel economy. I know it is a PITA, but have you tried playing around with the tire pressure to improve the snow traction?

If you want to save some cash on tires, look into retreads.

Actually, I have not even checked the pressure in my tires. The truck is brand new, and I just assumed that the pressures were set from the dealership. I will definitely check them. As far as the tires go, I don't mind paying for tires, but the Hankook tires my brother purchased were inexpensive and great performing. I am definitely going to get some new ones put on. I can sell the stock tires I'm sure.

[Charon]

I would suspect the dealership set the pressures to the sidewall maximum, which is generally somewhat above the pressures recommended by on the sticker on the truck. That is, if they even bothered to check the pressures at all. Higher pressures MAY help fuel economy, at the expense of a harsher ride. Lower pressures will probably help traction. Remember your new truck will have a tire pressure monitoring system, and that system won't like pressures too low.

[trollbait]

My experience with dealers is that they usually set the pressure to the vehicle sticker. The one I took my cars to for inspection was always lowering it down from the sidewall.

The TPMS doesn't give a warning until the pressure way out of range. Like around 10 psi, so there is room to set the tires to what you want.

If snow is a regular thing, a set of snow tires can be considered.

[Charon]

When I took my Tundra to the dealership for its 15K service, the service manager told me they set the tires to 35 psi. I showed him the sticker on the truck, and 35 was too high. He acted as if he had never seen the stickers before. Too, on all my other cars whenever I had tires rotated/balanced, they were always left inflated to the sidewall pressure no matter where I had it done.

My wife's Outback calls for about 30 psi all around. Its TPMS went off when one of the tires got down to about 25 psi. Other systems may differ. For that matter, each valve stem's sensor may vary from the others.

[andyrobo]

As of today, Fuelly users have tracked nearly 1 million miles in 178 2013 F150s and the average across all of them is 15.8 MPG. You MPG could be influenced by things such as local terrain (lots of hills), temps, use of air conditioning, gas sold in your area (more or less ethanol), etc. You should track at least 7 fill-ups here on Fuelly to get the most accurate estimate and then you can compare to where specifically you land in the results. Keep in mind what your car's in-dash MPG tells you is just an estimate and not as accurate as manually logging the actual amounts of fuel used.

[Charon]

I think it might be interesting to see not just the mean (average) mileage, but the standard deviation as well. Any way you can display that?