Whats the best header??

Weight is your issue sir. That extra weight will just require more energy to move. That extra weight will also make you have a larger contact patch from all of your tires. Not sure what psi they are right now, but try increasing them all by increments of 5psi. Obviously just for on road. That can have a fairly significant impact on increasing your fuel mileage.

You can also try resetting your ecu, by disconnecting your battery for about 10 minutes. If you hadn't after those parts installations.

 

RedBull! Your truck Haz

 

I have had all those parts on the truck for anywhere from 30k miles to 10k miles. Although I have never reset the ecu. Would that even benefit me at this point. I thought that resetting the ecu just sped up the normal learning curve that you would get during normal driving? As for the tires, I have them about as high as I dare run them and not just wear the centers out of them. So do you think that a supercharger would benefit me and give me the extra energy I am needing to go down the road with a somewhat decent mpg. I could get 18-20 out of my '98 taco that was built the same way but had 35's, 4.88's, and a supercharger on the 3.4L.

 

Try resetting it. Can't hurt. Tires being full, and having those mods for that long, my next question is, have you changed the fuel filter any time recently?

Heavy weight plus larger than factory tires, on factory gearing, makes me want to say you should upgrade the gearing.

Start with the simple stuff first though. Cheaper. If you haven't in a while, clean the air filter, and upgrade to the Dezod or URD fuel pumps kits. They make the filter external and easy to change. As well as about $10 for a new filter versus. ~$500 for OEM. Not sure if you have already tried/done/or know any of that. I assume you do know about, due to you position, but just am not sure. So not trying to be condescending.

Then from there, you will have a better idea on which way to go from there. Gears are overall easier in the end. Just need to plan for the right size. Also, considering where you work, you can look up all of the available sizes.3.90, 4.10, 4.30, 4.56.

 

My mileage has been pretty shitty since winter hit too, but I've also been doing more city driving as well. I just don't think our heavy Tacoma's like city driving at all, especially on winter blend fuel. My average lately has been about 11.9mpg.

Although I don't think redbull is a very good energy source either I have a few fuel ups that are as low at 8 mpg...

 

Could very well be that blend as well. Could also be the level of octane you guys are using. My friend Grumpy took down a bunch of mileage data, noting which octane level was used. Even though the 93 is clearly more expensive, he was actually saving money with it because he was getting enough better mileage overcome the "savings" of 87.

 

For a while I was running some 88 or 89 (can't remember exactly) octane ethanol free fuel (only ethanol free fuel in town and cost as much as 93 octane as well...). Ethanol helps keep condensation out of your fuel so I switched back to 87 octane when it got cold outside though. My driving is to sporadic to have any accurate data in fuel economy changes though.

I have been told over and over again that octane is a compression rating not an energy density rating. So basically 87 octane fuel is more likely to spontaneously ignite under compression than 93 octane, which is why boosted motors and high compression motors run higher octanes.

Energy density is how many miles you can get out of a gallon of fuel. For example ethanol has a fairly low energy density which is why you can get better fuel economy out of ethanol free fuel and diesel has an even higher energy density than gasoline which is part of why those monster diesel motors can get better fuel economy than our little V6's... (also has to do with diesel engines typically being more efficient and such).

So my guess is that anyone that is getting better fuel economy out of a higher octane, just means that the higher octane is likely ethanol free or has less ethanol anyway. The ethanol free gas station I was fueling up at has basic fuel that was 10% ethanol, middle grade that was 5% ethanol and premium that was ethanol free. Most gas stations just say, "may contain 10% ethanol" so maybe the upper grades typically don't contain 10% ethanol but occasionally do.

 

Well now is the time when you can laugh at be Brady, cause my 10-12 mpg was on the highway on the way to North Dakota and back, not in town. In town I am at the 10-11. So basically it just doesn't change when I get on the highway. Even going slower only gets me to the 12mpg mark. And since it didn't really change as I traveled across 3 states and filled up at multiple different stations I am not sure I can blame it on the fuel blend or ethonal content. As for the fuel filter, no I have not changed it out. Air filter is clean and spark plugs are changed every 20K miles. I think I might put my 265/75R16's on the truck just to see if it really is the gearing. I would love to do both but I just can't swing it the same time. I have been always under the assumption that gearing and adding power both did the same thing in effect to drivabilty. You can add more power to take up some of the added load on the system or you can gear lower to lower the load on the system which would require less power. And I noticed that I did get slightly better mileage with the lower octane. The higher octane just made the truck feel better cause it didn's seem to shift as often so it seemed like it had more power but never changed the mpg's so was a wasted of money. I don't get it, I just know that I want a super charger and gears w/ a front locker. But that is a pipe dream so I want to make the better mover first. Thank you for you input Torspd. I am going to reset the ecu and maybe go to smaller tires in a couple more weeks so I can tell if it is reset or the tires. Never make to many changes at once or you will never know what each change really does on its own.

 

I should also note that I have been running my tires at only 20 psi for the last couple months so that could be the issue too. When I was getting better mileage I was running them at 42 psi. I drove to Moab with them at 60 psi (Big O Tires set them at that and I never thought to check it...) and I averaged about 20mpg for the trip there, got 21+ mpg on one of the tanks!

 

What about borla or banks exhast

 

i just saw that *correction* borla still does not make a headder for our truck but im not sure about banks... i need to see some good dyno figures!