fuel duration on an immobilized vehicle with engine running

I stand corrected then. but once again to try and put my view into perspective, you cannot buy a generator with the rpm band the truck has to deal with. if you could, it would not be reliable. ideal power generators have two rpms closely related so they oil well at both idle and loaded.

and like a typical forum junkie, with no evidence or factual data at all, I can guarantee a 1gr to last longer at 2000rpm vs idle. . . . . crap

 

I do see your viewpoint and agree with it for most of the popularly posed questions on TW. IMHO Not the best thing for a motor, but nowhere near the worst. All in all a dedicated generator is the better choice for constant use, but for some situations idling just makes better sense IMO.

 

In all my years of being in the automotive service and repair industry, I have never once seen a vehicle come in with some sort of problem which originated from it "idling too much." While I do agree that idling will waste an ass ton of gas unnecessarily (this is especially true in California), I highly disagree with the fact that idling a vehicle for an extended amount of time is doing some sort of damage to it. I have never seen a vehicle with a problem because of it as I said above nor have I seen some sort of reports or statistics floating around which indicate that it is damaging anything. That is my two cents.

 

Could not agree more! The truck isn't a very effective generator and there are much more efficient methods to generate electricity, but idling for extended periods won't harm the engine.

David

 

I work on the arctic in Alaska where the temp may drop to -60 ambient in the winter. Our work trucks, which are F-series pickups both gas and diesel idle 24/7 for nearly a month straight sometimes. The only problems that occurs are with the diesels and the new exhaust system, because they will not regenerate at idle.

So as far as idling straight on a few camping trips, I'd say you'll be fine. But like others have mentioned you need to figure out if the bed outlet will power your equipment.

 

I went camping and hooked up a light to the back up my truck too and I left it on for like 3 hours with out turning on the truck and when I did it started just fine . I then lefted running for like 30 min and did the same thing again . I have a optima yellow too battery so I don't know if that made a difference .

 

Straight pipe and tune those diesels it will make them run better

 

They're all owned by bp and want to keep the warranty through Ford, so unfortunately they all stay bone suck

 

Ever seen a cop car sitting still with the engine turned off? No they are not specially designed engines we generally got rid of them at about 180K and we never lost an engine. However using a 200+ HP engine to make 400 watts is nuts. I have one of the cheap generators and have for a good 8 years and use it around the farm it is poorly regulated and noisy but it runs fine if you are going camping spend the $1000 it will keep people from throwing stones at you.