looking to buy another truck but keep coming up against big engines. Want to know if there is a huge difference in gas mileage with a fuel inject vs a truck with a carb. With the price of gas today, want to make a good decision
At highway speed you are unlikely to see any difference. Fuel injection works much better than carburetors at lower speeds, especially with a cold engine.
052003 wrote:
They put both straight six carb and FI engines in Jeeps and the FI ones all get worse mileage. So do the FI conversions.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's - Gone to the rust pile... Canadian Off Road Trips Photos: Non members can still view! Jan/06
I dont have a Ford, BUT my experience with multiple port fuel injection in GMs and Dodges has been very positive. Power, responsiveness, and economy have been exceptional.
I had a throttle body "injector" in an earlier GM which I would have gladly traded for a carb. There was nothing good to say about it.
It is my belief, perhaps oversimplified, that the transmission, the injected engine control system, and associated sensors, etc, need to be designed to work together in order to obtain these benefits. Aftermarket may be okay, but I am not in a position to even guess about that.
The more integrated the control system, the more clever things can be done for sure. The best example that I can think of is the way carmakers are now vastly extending the life of transmissions by having the engine controller throttle back during every upshift instead of continuing to dump energy into the clutch packs needlessly. It has the side-effect of making the shifts smoother as well. The last Chrysler rental car I had (a 4.0L Pacifica) was obviously using the engine controller to do RPM-matching during each shift and the shifts were lightning-fast but very smooth. I was highly impressed. I was even impressed with some earlier GMs that simply allowed closed-throttle upshift without RPM-matching, but why stop there?
That said, standalone closed-loop aftermarket EFI with absolutely no other system integration can be a huge improvement too. A well-tuned carb can almost match closed-loop EFI in highway driving, but rarely in stop-and-go driving, through drastic weather changes, etc.
Open-loop aftermarket EFI (like the early Holley Projection) is a way to drain dollars out of your wallet with absolutely NO benefit over a carb and a lot of downside.
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