If you want to increase the fuel economy on your diesel pickup, there are many ways you can do it.

Do you want to get better fuel economy from your diesel pickup? Here are some great tips that will help you squeeze a few extra MPGs out of your diesel powered pick up truck. Some of these tips are good for a few 10ths of an MPG, while others will give you substantially more miles out of every gallon of whatever you’re burning in there.

Tip 1 – Drive with the tailgate up. Sure, this flies in the face of everything you’ve been told about pick up aerodynamics since you were a kid, but it is true. Why does driving with the tailgate up get you better fuel economy than driving with it down? After all, when it’s down the air flows right over the roof, through the bed, and out the back. When it is up, the air slams into the tailgate, slowing down your truck, right? Wrong!

When the tailgate is raised, the air does not slam into it. What actually happens is that a rotating vortex of air forms in the truck’s bed. This vortex actually guides the air over the bed and deposits it gently beyond the tailgate, forming a nice smooth airflow over the bed and beyond. Opening the tailgate destroys this vortex, creates more aerodynamic drag, and kills your mileage.

Tip 2 – Drive and accelerate slower. Why sure, this is another one that you’ve heard since you were a kid, but this one happens to be true, and more so if your truck is jacked up into the stratosphere. Trucks are about as aerodynamic as the proverbial barn door, and the more it’s jacked up, the worse the aerodynamics are. It’s is a matter of both frontal area and a statistic called drag coefficient, which is a measure of how much resistance the vehicle presents to the air as it moves past. The combination of the two measures how hard it is to get your truck through the air. Jacking up your truck hits you with a double whammy. It increases the frontal area and makes your drag coefficient worse.

Since air resistance increases with the square of vehicle speed, relatively little air resistance at slow speeds turns into huge walls of air standing in the way of your truck at higher speeds. That means driving twice as fast will actually cause 4 times the air resistance. That means it takes 4 times more power to push your truck through the atmosphere at 70mph as it does when you’re driving 35mph. Take your foot out of it and you’ll save fuel.

Tip 3 – Clean up your act. All those tools you keep in the bed of your truck weigh a ton. Well maybe not a ton, but probably a few hundred pounds, especially since you keep them in that steel bed box. The combination is a heck of a lot of weight you’re carrying around every day. If you don’t use them all the time, remove them, or at least change the box to a lighter, plastic variety, especially if theft isn’t a concern. Every pound of extra weight you’re carrying takes more fuel to accelerate and take up hills. Even if your truck can tow 10,000 lbs, those 250lbs of extra tools you’re lugging around will still cost you money. It also burns up your brakes faster when you stop, costing you even more money. You could get .5% – 1.5% increase from this alone.

Tip 4 – Get an aerocap for the bed. This is a smooth, faired cover for the bed that extends form the top of the cab to the top of the tailgate. It significantly improves aerodynamics over the bed area. In fact, tests have revealed a 4% fuel economy improvement at only 55mph, with high speeds promising even better returns. These things must be expensive, right? Hardly, you can build one for less than $100. Even if you buy one and get it color matched for your truck, it should still set you back less than $500. Obviously you’ll have to remove it if you’re carrying anything in the bed that is too large.

Tip 5 – Conserve momentum when driving. This is one of the most effective driving techniques to increase fuel mileage. One of the reasons that hybrid vehicles deliver such outstanding fuel economy is because they recapture energy through regenerative braking. Since you can’t do that in your truck, you are going to conserve the momentum you have already built up.

There are 2 keys to accomplishing this. The first is to look far ahead when driving and anticipate when you might need to stop. Every time you use the brakes, you are turning your momentum into useless heat. That heat cost you precious fuel to get. Look at the traffic signals and traffic ahead of you. If traffic slows or the light turns red, get off the accelerator and coast. Your goal is to coast up to the light and get there after it has turned green, so you never have to stop. The same with heavily traffic situations. If traffic is slowing to a crawl or a complete stop, try to anticipate the flow, so you can slow down, but never entirely stop. In heavy traffic you’ll often be foiled by drivers cutting in ahead of you, but it is worth a try.

This technique avoids wasting the fuel it takes accelerating from a complete stop or a very slow speed, and sometimes can save you 10% depending on driving conditions.

Tip 6 – Drafting large trucks ca save substantial fuel, but can also get you killed. If you use this technique, make sure you’re not too close. Even having a large truck 100 feet ahead of you can offer substantial aerodynamic gains at freeway speeds. The problem is that at 65mph, you’re only about a second behind a vehicle at 100 feet. Thatb is about half the distance experts recommend for safe driving. Sure you can use the “I can stop faster than he can.” logic, and that may well be true when you’re talking about an 18 wheeler, but it is a big risk to take. If you do this, it is essential to be paying 100% attenuation at all times.

Tip 7 – Replace your factory air intake with a free flowing, after market unit. This reduced restriction in the intake tract, often leading to a 3% – 5% fuel economy improvement, depending on the truck you’re driving.

Tip 8 – Replace the exhaust system with a free flowing exhaust. Similar to the reasons that cause your engine to operate more efficiently when you change the intake system, you can do the same thing with the exhaust. Any time you lower the resistance, especially on a turbo charged engine, where exhaust tuning is less of a concern, you will improve fuel economy, throttle response, and hp/torque. All in all, a great deal.

Tip 9 – Maintain your truck. There is no sense in spending any money on any sort of add on if your truck isn’t operating at peak efficiency in the first place. Proper tire inflation, clean air filter, clean fuel injectors, and regularly changed oil all factor into your truck’s fuel mileage. Keeping your injectors clean is a matter of using a fuel additive at regular intervals. Crawling under your ride every few months to check on things, change the oil and lube things up isn’t a bad idea, either. A fuel additive will also help ensure there is no water in your fuel system and increase fuel lubricity, both of which are important to maintaining optimum performance. After spending 2 hours at the side of a road, in the middle of nowhere, waiting for a tow because the F-350 I was driving had gotten water in the fuel system, I can vouch for the fact that water and diesel do not mix.

Modern electroncis have done wonders for driveability, performance and feul economy. Thankfully, you can take it even further with some minor mods.

Tip 10 – Add an Electronic Control Unit (ECU) programmer targeted at increasing fuel mileage. These days virtually all engine and transmission functions are controlled by one or more electronic processing units. So it was only natural for people to soon try and market ECUs optimized for more power and better fuel economy. There a half a dozen or more of these things on the market from such manufacturers as Hypertech, Edge, Bully Dog and Jet. You’ll not only get improved fuel mileage, you’ll typically get improved performance as well. Several of theses units let you change the tune for your application. That means if you’re towing, for example, you can set the ECU in tow mode to increase low and midrange torque. It is easy to set it back to fuel economy mode for increased fuel economy in normal driving when you’re finished towing. As an added bonus you’ll often get lower exhaust gas temperature, lower noise, and better throttle response when using these performance ECU systems.

How to Tell If Engine Modifications Pay Off

It is all well and good to spend several hundred or thousand dollars on increasing your fuel economy, but will you ever get your money back, and if so, when will that payoff arrive? It is all a matter of simple math.

Say you drive 20,000 miles per year and your truck averages 14mpg overall. That means you’ll burn about 1,428 gallons of fuel in a one year period. As this is written, the national average for diesel fuel is $3.07 a gallon. That means that you’ll spend $4,384 a year on fuel at current prices. If your modifications net you a 15% fuel economy increase, your mileage will go from 14mpg to 16.1mpg. Your annual fuel usage will drop to 1,242 gallons, costing you $3,813, and saving $571 per year. How much did your modifications cost?

If you spent $1,000 on an ECU programmer, a performance exhaust, and a free flow intake, you’ll be earning money on your modifications in only 21 months If you are going to keep your truck for longer than that, it makes sense to go ahead and install those modifications, because they will pay for themselves fairly soon, and then save you almost $600 per year. In most cases these mods not only give you better fuel economy, but added power too. It’s kind of like getting something for nothing or buy one, get one free.

To find the best deals on exhaust systems, intakes and ECU programmers for your truck click here now.

Even though, on average, diesel engines get better fuel mileage than gasoline engines, there have been many after market devices introduced for increasing diesel mileage. Do any of them even work? If so, what is the best device for increasing diesel mileage? That is a question many drivers want answered, and even more will be clamoring for an answer to that question if fuel prices continue climbing.

Some of the recent proposed congressional legislation promise to push fuel prices even higher, in the name of cutting back on greenhouse gasses. The more fuel costs, the less people drive, and the less carbon comes out of the tailpipe. The strategy will doubtlessly be effective, as the high fuel prices in the summer of 2008 caused people to tun to fuel efficient vehicles in droves. Those higher fuel prices will almost force motorists and business turn toward more fuel efficient vehicles, or modify the ones they already own to get better mileage.

The other factor effecting fuel prices is that increasing the domestic supply is frowned upon for environmental reasons, leaving U.S. Citizens to depend upon an increasingly volatile region for the bulk of it’s oil supply. Business hates uncertainty, and that is reflected in higher oil prices. Rest assured, you will pay more for diesel in the not too distant future.

Many modern diesels, especially those found in trucks lie the GM Duramax, Ford Powerstroke, and the Dodge Cummins diesel produce prodigious amounts of torque right off the showroom floor. The problem for truck owners is the mileage sin’t all it could be. Much of this can be traced to steps undertaken by the manufacturers to curb emissions from the big diesels. While they produce tremendous amounts of torque, the torque peak is shifted higher in the RPM range than it should be for optimum efficiency. This is done in an effort to combat tailpipe emissions, but consequently these trucks get about 15 – 20% worse mileage than they should for many drivers.

With cars like the Volkswagen Jetta TDI diesel routinely getting over 45mpg, their drivers are already well ahead of the typical motorist in terms of fuel economy, unlike the aforementioned truck pilots. You can always improve things, and owners of large diesel pickups or 18 wheelers are constantly looking for ways to improve their mileage. In many cases the drivers of such vehicles are using them to earn a living, and every dollar spent on fuel comes straight out of their bottom line. Even if you’re just using your Cummins powered Ram to tow your boat or travel trailer on weekends, saving a bit of fuel is always welcome. If the price of diesel fuel starts heading up over $4.00 a gallon again, it will become essential to find ways to get your diesel better fuel economy.

The question is, how much can the mileage be improved? The easiest and cheapest fuel saving modification you can make is to your right foot; lighten it up a bit. It won’t cost you a cent, but can definitely return a savings at the pump. Why is it so important to keep your weight off the right foot with modern diesel engines?

It all comes down to one thing; boost pressure. Modern diesels are turbocharged, which does wonders for their power and efficiency. A side effect of turbocharging however, is that when you dip into the throttle, the boost pressure goes up, causing a massive power surge. Unfortunately for the mileage minded among us, it also tells the ECU to increase the injector’s duty cycle, so the engine gets the extra fuel it needs to keep up with the air forced into the engine by the turbo. Extra fuel in means worse mileage out for your diesel.

So short of driving like GranMaMa, what after market goodies can you add to your diesel powered rig to bring out it’s parsimonious qualities? Probably the easiest and most cost effective add on is going to be a low restriction intake system. This is simply a smoother, more direct shot from filter to intake manifold, rather than the somewhat convoluted path the factory sets up for the air to travel on its way into the engine. At the entrance there will be a low restriction air filter. By freeing up the engine’s ability to pull in air, this device will increase not only mileage but also power and throttle response.

What a bonus! Low restriction intakes are made by many performance oriented after market manufacturers, such as Bully Dog, Banks Engineering, and K&N. They are fairly inexpensive, ranging from about $200 up to the $400 range. All in all an intake is a pretty cost effective mileage modification. You might see up to a 10% mileage increase with the addition of an intake, but you’ll also hear more noise from the intake tract.

Be careful if you use an oiled filter, as some people have reported problems with their MAF (Mass Airflow Sensor) units due to excessive oil leaving the filter and coating the MAF. Properly oiled, this shouldn’t be a problem, and I have used a reusable, oiled K&N filter myself for over 125,000 miles without a hint of trouble. You should just be aware the potential for problems exists.

Speaking of noise, you’ll find the other cost effective mileage mod dedicated to getting things out of the engine, and it will definitely increase the noise level a few decibels. A high performance, low restriction exhaust system will help increase your diesel mill’s efficiency. Like the intake, you’ll gain on both ends of the spectrum, picking up some power and torque, along with your gain in MPG. How much of either you’ll get depends on the exact system you install.

Another exhaust related mod that is fairly popular is the DPF elimination kit. DPF stands for Diesel Particulate Filter, and is an integral part of the emission control system on trucks made since 2007. As the name suggests, it’s job is to filter particulates out of the exhaust. That’s why most modern diesel engines don’t smoke like a factory from the Civil War era. As the DPF fills up with trapped particulate matter, the emission control system uses one of several ways to clean it out, restoring the flow.

The process of burning out the stored particulates is called regeneration, or regen for short. Your engine will monitor sensors in front of and behind the DPF to measure pressure differential between the front and rear of the filter. When the number exceeds a factory specified parameter, you get all manner of fun. The idle speed increases (keep your foot firmly on the brake when stopped in one of these vehicles, lest a sudden increase in idle speed send you nosing ahead into the car in front of you. It’s great fun at the Mikey D’s drive through.) and you’ll see some light colored smoke out of the tailpipe as the old soot burns off.

There are two problems with the DPF. Problem one is that even when the flow is restored to as-new levels, the DPF still provides a restriction in the exhaust system. Number two is that the regen process uses extra fuel when it happens, usually every 150 – 500 miles, further decreasing your fuel mileage. By eliminating these two problems, a DPF elimination kit will increase your diesel mileage, and as with a performance exhaust system, add some power as part of the bargain. Unfortunately when you eliminate the DPF, you’ll also eliminate something else in most cases, your vehicle’s warrantee, and your pristine exhaust.

In addition you’ll run afoul of the all-powerful Environmental Protection Agency, which is why these devices are only to be used off road, not to increase your mileage when towing your boat to the lake. The nice thing about eliminating your DPF is that it is a cheap and effective strategy, and who doesn’t like those? The not so nice thing is that it turns you from law abiding into a law breaker and voids your warrantee, so install one at your own risk.

All modern internal automotive and light truck engines are controlled by computers that would put those used by NASA for their 1970′s space missions to shame. They have reign over virtually every system in your vehicle, from engine and transmission operation to keeping you at a comfortable 72 degrees while you enjoy The Herd on ESPN Radio, courtesy of Sirius/XM. The computers in question are called Electronic Control Units (ECU) or Electronic Control Modules (ECM). In a diesel engine they control the injectors and the turbo boost, in addition to the transmission shift points, slippage, and torque converter lockup. You can see they have a huge potential to affect the mileage and power your truck puts on the road.

In the beginning, ECU modifications (also known as an ECU flash and an ECU remap) were mainly targeted toward increasing power and torque so drivers could improve their acceleration and comfortably tow big loads. Then the auto manufacturers started boosting power on their trucks, so that right off the showroom floor many trucks had over 600 pound feet of torque. That’ll pull your horse trailer! Right about the same time diesel prices went from less than $2.00 a gallon to over $3.00per gallon. Suddenly, increasing mileage was a much higher priority for drivers, especially as their trucks were so well endowed straight from the factory.

The upshot of this was that many of the aftermarket ECU manufacturers started developing devices that were targeted at increasing fuel mileage, rather than boosting power and torque. In most cases they actually did a bit of both, however. Some of the better known and more reputable after market performance chip tuning brands include Bully Dog, Banks Engineering, Hypertech, Superchips, Edge, and Jet. Most of them are adjustable, so you can vary your tuning according to your specific needs. That way when you are doing heavy towing through the hills, you’re not running the same ECU set up as when you’re driving in traffic in the valley.

Some will also let you check or reset your trouble codes. That’s nice because you can see what is up before you spend the time and money to visit the repair shop. Another advantage is that since they control the transmission, you can change the shift points to help increase your mileage, and firm up the shifts. Firming up the shifts will increase transmission clutch pack longevity, acceleration and fuel mileage, all at the same time.

There is actually a distinction between the types of ECU mods. You can get a new, reprogrammed ECU or install a device that simply attaches to the existing wiring harness and changes the program of the existing unit. These add on units are also known by the moniker programmers, performance programmers, or some such nonsense.

Some of names used by the mileage enhancing ECUs are MaxEnergy (Hypertech), Mileage XS (Superchips), and MileageMax (Edge).

Do they work to increase mileage? With the newer diesels many people report getting an overall 2 – 4 mpg increase, in addition to the increased power and response they enjoy. Obviously, that will depend a lot on driving conditions and how deep you depress the accelerator. Given that the after market ECUs are so easy to install (just a simple unplug the old, and plug in the new in most cases. Some of them also “piggyback” on the old ECU, which is what I was describing above) it is a pretty nice mod. In most cases the install takes all of 20 – 30 minutes, and you don’t even have to get your hands dirty!

If you’ve added other performance parts, such as air intakes or exhaust components, you’ll likely see a bit more improvement than installing an ECU upgrade alone.

On an MPG per dollar basis, and ease of installation basis, plus given the fact that it adds substantially more power on turbocharged diesel engines, while simultaneously increasing power and torque, the performance ECU has to be the best after market device for increasing diesel mileage.

Most of the reputable ECU manufacturers make a good product, but the MileageMax from Edge seems to give the best bang for the buck, since it is about $50 – $100 less expensive than the others. To find out more, and see what customers who bought the Edge and other performance ECUs have to say – click here now.

Stay tuned for some modifications to increase the mileage (and maybe power) on diesel cars, such as the VW TDI diesel.