Towing a 30 foot travel trailer with my 89 gmc k3500 dually TBI 7.4 with a th400 trans and 4.10 gears. Empty trailer weight is about 6k so figure 7500 with all our stuff in it, plus btwn 1000-2000 lbs in the bed. Towing it thru the adirondacks.
I did this trip this summer a couple times and the truck does pretty well except on hills. Looking for ways to open this engine up a lil bit for towing. Right now I'm getting 8mpg normal and 6 ish towing and honestly don't care a whole lot about mileage as I only put about 3-4k on it a year.
Truck has just under 130k on it. Runnin real good right now, i've put about 2k into it since i bought it. No money in engine/trans yet, but i've done radiator/belts/hoses/brakes/suspension/etc.
I'm looking for bang for my buck(obviously :)) so I figure the usual easy stuff is out. What I've been looking at are cams/manifolds/heads. I think heads are a lil more than my budget can take. I was checking out the edelbrock manifolds/cams for my engine and they seem reasonable pricewise. I can do all the installation myself for this, I haven't done a cam before but i've done manifolds/heads and luckily my dad has been wrenching on stuff since the 70's so he's there if i need him.
Curious as to what others have done to this engine and what their results were. If i'm overlooking something simple on this engine like headers/exhaust i'd be willing to think about that too.... but i don't mind getting my hands dirty with things like cams/intakes if that's where the results are...
Thanks in advance guys..
Ed