F-150 Eco Boost Towing Vs Nissan Titan

[Diamondpilot]

I am inclined to agree with you on this Mace. While I have never owned a Titan, I have some acquaintances that do. None of them brag about good fuel economy. I bought a new truck this year and considered a Titan, even the dealer was up front with the fact that the fuel mileage was poor compared to the competition. A quick search on the net will support this.

So if the eco can only best one of the known poor fuel mileage trucks by 2 mpg on a comparable tow load, that is not very impressive. I think my new truck, a Ram 1500 crew cab with the Hemi could come very close to matching the eco in this comparison.

If you go look back through any of the post I have done about the Titan its my complaint also but I knew that going in. I have owned well over 20 trucks since 1996 and over 25 total vehicles. I do my research. While the Titan does poor around town and unloaded it was built to tow. I tow loads ranging from 2,500# to 25,000# about 10,000 miles per year with different vehicles.

I seriously doubt any truck from any manufacture other than the Ford Eco Boost could do any better than the Titan towing.

Many many times when I do trips we take as many as 20 trucks all pulling roughly equal loads. Last trip we had 46 people for a multi house boat trip 800 miles away. Trucks included in the trip were 1999 and newer products from Ford, Dodge, Nissan, and Ford. No Toyota's on this one. Going though the hills of Kentucky and Tennessee on I75 no gas truck could keep with the Titan and I on average turned in about .5 mpg better. While not a huge increase in mpg it was better than the 8.5 average most got.

Chris

 

[Diamondpilot]

The fact is that both those mileages are garbage in my opinion. Yea your towing a big box, and can go fast while doing it. But the reason i dont have a newer tow vehicle is one price is crazy even on 10 yr old trucks and i can get 8mpg towing 5k lbs of trailer and tractor (yea i know a tractor does not have the profile of a box trailer) and implements with my 1980 k10. Its not comfortable as a tighten or as smooth or fast etc but to spend 40K to get 2mpg better is not sound judgement in my case when i travel so few miles a year in it. I keep a car for everyday travel to get 30+ mpg in.

I just did this same trip. Took the tractor to my sisters new house to mow, pull shrubs, move 75 tons of top soil, ect for 2 days. Had the tractor@ 5,200#, 6'Bush Hog @ 600#, 7'Grader Blade @350#. Got 12.1 mpg on a 150 mile round trip behind the Titan. Mostly highway and about 10 miles each way secondary roads.

Chris

 

[Lt CHEG]

Good test. While unlikely that I'll be considering a new truck any time soon, it's nice to see such comparisons. While I guess I was hoping that the ecoboost would have done a little better on fuel economy, from what I understand that's not what it's really all about. As I understand it the ecoboost was designed around people like myself. People that can't or don't want to have two trucks. They need a truck sometimes, and need some decent power sometimes, but also use their truck like a car too. The ecoboost is supposed to use virtually none of that power on tap when driving the truck like a car, without a load, and deliver really great fuel economy when it's not used like a truck (well good fuel economy for a truck anyway). However, when used as a truck and those twin turbos start spooling and it makes more power it uses more fuel, and isn't supposed to be all that much better with respect to fuel economy when towing. If I could average 19 to 20 mpg driving fairly conservatively when driving the truck like a car, but get 11 or 12 when towing, I could certainly live with that tradeoff.

On an unrelated note, I can never understand why the GM 5.3 liter gets dogged so much here. I think it's a great engine, and does a great job of delivering adequate power, with decent fuel economy. With 3.42 gears on my 2009 Silverado I pulled roughly 11,000 pounds (over 1,500 pounds over its tow rating) of tractor, trailer, gear and people up through the Adirondack mountains. I had to drop to about 50 to 55 mph in order to keep the rpms under 4,000 on one particularly steep hill that normally has the 18 wheelers down to 40 mph, but I was okay with that as I'm not in a race when towing anything, even a snowmobile trailer. I was perfectly happy with the performance of the 5.3 liter V8, and only upgraded to a 3/4 ton when I added the backhoe attachment to my tractor which way overtaxed the rear springs and axle on the half ton truck. As someone who owns a GM 6.0 liter V8, owned several 5.3 liter V8's, drives a hemi for work, drove a 5.4 liter V8 powered Expedition for work previously and owns an old 7.3 Powerstroke diesel and owned a 6.4 Powerstroke diesel I still think that the 5.3 V8 is the overall best engine for people that want to own only one truck. Frankly, I probably would have bought a 5.3 V8 equipped 2500HD with 4.10 gears if such a combination was available.

 

[buck12]

Does anyone know if or when Ford will put the ecoboost in the Expedition? My wife is wanting to move from her Explorer to a full size SUV. Sorry for hijacking the thread.

 

[clemsonfor]

You call the Titan "meagar power" but its not about HP numbers. Its about torque and where it makes that torque. I would rather have grunt in a truck than 500 hp. HP does nothing but sell trucks to the people who really do not know trucks. I could have bought anything I wanted in 2008 when I got this Titan but I did so based on data, not sales gimmicks and claims. I would bet my last pay check that my Titan pulling the same trailer would turn in equal to or better numbers than any 1/2 ton GM, Toyota, or Dodge. Only the Eco Boost will beat it pulling a load.

To me 20% is impressive and as a former Hemi owner and a guy who has a degree in aero space technology I would say there is no way you could match the numbers. Drag goes up by a factor of 4 as speed increases. At highway speed drag is a killer. We both noticed our mpg when up considerably, about 1/2 mpg better, when we drove the last 45 miles of the trip at 59 mph versus the 69 mph on the freeway.

Either way both trucks did well. We never had a issue holding speed on grades that had other trucks down to 40 mph with the hazard lights on, 7%. Granted we were not a max gross weight.

The thing that surprises me ever day about the Titan is it does so well towing. It does awful around town or on the highway with about 14.6mpg average. My best tank ever, all highway, was about 16mpg and my weekly average with about 1/3 towing loads from 2,500# to 9,700# is 12.8mpg. I track every drop of fuel on a phone app so these number are true data, not a guess. It will do 12mph pulling a 7,000# boat on a 800 mile trip and 9.1mpg pulling a 9,700# boat on the same trip. Granted boats pull much better than a box trailer or camper.

The Eco Boos on the other hand has averaged 18mpg with some light towing since day one according to the dash. This trip was the only one I have date on and 12.6mpg seems pretty good to me, granted it was a larger drop in economy versus the Titan.

Look at it this way, the Titan cost about $90 to drive and the F-150 cost $73 to drive. That adds up.:thumbsup:

Chris

You seem to have a complex and busy life?? How do you drive so many miles yet be a professional pilot, and run a car/trailer repair buisness, and fix boats and tow your boat so many miles??

You must have tremendous time off of work as a pilot to do some of these things?

 

[clemsonfor]

I know another forester that has the eco boost f150. I asked him about it and he said that the dash on it said 19mpg avg for the life of the truck, around 10-15k miles maybe? This sounds good but we have some of the f150 4x4 big cabs at work and they get 16.5avg mpg. Thats a good 2.5mpg advantage but not as much as i had expectd.

 

[rockshaft]

Thanks for your post.
I can only add that I drove a '06 Titan crew cab, with big tow package, just over 5000miles hauling a 7500lb enclosed cargo trailer and had a trip mileage of about 11.5-12mpg. This was from Maine to Alaska.

Well as you know I tow quite often. Today we had to help a family member move so I loaded up my 2008 Nissan Titan 4x4 and my dad had is 2011 F-150 4x4 with the new Eco Boost. We both had identical trailers loaded within what I would guess was 400# of each other according to the scales. I was at 6,100# and he was at 5,780#. We followed each other with me in the lead from Cincy to my house doing 69mph on the free way and 59mph on the state roads. It was a 232 mile round trip.

Truck #1

2008 Nissan Titan 4x4 Off Road Extended Cab 6.5' Bed 2" lift with 4.10 gears and the big tow package rated at 9,500# towing. 56,xxx miles

Truck #2
2011 F-150 Eco Boost FX4 Crew Cab 5.5' bed. 3.73 gears rated at 11,300# towing. 11,xxx miles

Both trailers were identical. Tandem axle 14' enclosed box trailers with surge brakes. Total trailer length with tongue was 20'. They were 8'6" wide and had a 7' tall roll up door on the back. I would estimate the total height at 9'6". According to the rental yard they weigh 2,560# empty but I did not confirm.

We both picked up the trailers at 3 pm yesterday then drove home, 3.5 miles. Today we drove to Cincy at 6:30am, loaded up, and back on the road by 11am. We stopped 1 mile after loading up and filled our tanks and reset the mpg thang a majobs. We got to the destination at 1:30 after stopping for lunch then unloaded and returned the trailers at 3pm about 12 miles.

Once again, when we left this morning once loaded up we zeroed out our mpg thing a majobs on the dash after filling up about a mile down the road and here are the results.

F-150 got 12.6mpg both by the dash and hand calculated.

Nissan Titan got 10.1 by the dash but 10.3 hand calculating.

Long story short the new Eco Boost got 20% better mpg pulling a 6,000# load than a V8 Titan.

I felt both trucks did a fine job and there really was not much difference in pulling feeling from the trailers being empty or loaded other than stopping difference. What I am saying is the wind drag is a bigger issue than the weight.

Chris

 

[slowzuki]

All sounds good to me, I was getting 8 mpg in my empty F350 srw with the 5.4 all winter, so I tore into the brakes and found they had been dragging. Like a new truck now! Gets 12.1 mpg now, empty. I drive 5-10 km/hr under the speed limit usually, very little city driving, maybe 20 stop lights / stop signs per tank.

My in laws have a 2010 F150 supercrew 4x4 with the 5.4, they have been driving 10 km/h under the limit too and staying out of town the last few tanks to see what it can do. They have been getting 23-24 mpg while with their normal driving habits they get 17-19 mpg.

 

[CompactTractorFan]

Thanks for posting Chris!

I can't wait until ours comes in.

 

[Diamondpilot]

You seem to have a complex and busy life?? How do you drive so many miles yet be a professional pilot, and run a car/trailer repair buisness, and fix boats and tow your boat so many miles??

You must have tremendous time off of work as a pilot to do some of these things?

Yes. I fly a corporate jet and we have two full crew's for it. Captain and First Officer. I am a captain and last year my crew worked 138 days, or about 12 days a month. This week for example I leave at 3:45 pm monday and get home on wednesday at 7:15 pm. We hit 9 cities on this trip. There are some weeks I will not fly at all and others I will fly all 5 days.

Last week I few to DC on tuesday and did not fly home till thursday. Highlight of that trip was seeing the shuttle land 20 minutes behind us on a 747. I also managed to do a Rhino Lining, do this trip yesterday, and work on a boat and trailer monday. I am always busy. Today we sleep in, went to Dennys, and now are relaxing then seeing the new America Pie Movie tonight.

Chris