Fitzgerald Glider Owners, I have a few questions....

I agree 100%. Coronado is about all I would be interested in from FL. But I have heard, not confirmed, that they are heavy. What ever I do I want to be able to stay at about 30k with flatbed.

But this likely is mostly dreaming. I will be running part-time by this time next year and can't justify the money. After all, I'm not old man England.

 

SHC
Heavy Load


Theres a place around loudon, Tn and cookeville, Tn deals in nothing but coronado 's.. right off 40 west of K-Town...

WHat happened to your blue western star?

 

I was in jessup,md,in the TA-Truckstop and mr.Haney was coming to the truckstop and was changing my ecmprogram with his notebook .was a 1,5 hour job for him.he is a nice professional guy

 

I'd find a load up that way if he could work on my Volvo. Only guy IO have found wants like $1400. Ouch

 

http://www.hooverstruck.com/

 

I forgot to mention, I also usually run 5-15 mph faster than you. I know it's slightly apples to oranges, with me having a 6TS and you with a MBN, and you intended this thread to be about gliders, but I think you could get 8-9mpg out of that thing the way you run it if you'd get it tuned. The only time I've been able to measure my mileage accurately in a similar situation to yours, I deadheaded from Texarkana back to Knoxville, filled up at that first TA in AR on 30, stopped and idled for about 2 hours just outside of Nashville, and filled up at the TA in Knoxville. I ran 70-75 most of the way, and got 7.8 mpg. My truck's got 3.70 rears on tall 24s, so I turn about 1600-1700 rpm at those speeds, not exactly ideal for fuel economy. I feel pretty confident that if I'd gone 60 it would've been closer to 9mpg, if not over. This is with a flatbed and a brick of a truck like yours, I'm at about 31,500 lbs empty.

All this to say I think you could spend a couple bucks on the truck you have now and get the kind of fuel mileage you're looking for. I saw in another thread that you need a new exhaust manifold-the non-coated PDI manifolds are about $1150, plus, say, $300, for new exhaust gaskets, studs, and nuts. Then $16-1800 for a turbo and $800 for the ECM, you're looking at $4k. If you go from 6.5mpg to 8mpg, that makes for a 15 week ROI @ $3.60/gallon, based on 2600 miles/week, which I think is what you've said you run. Surely you're going to keep that truck that long... You could either overnight the ECM or buy a used one and get it programmed, which is what I did. If you went with stock 6nz parts instead of the performance stuff, I bet you could do it for almost half that cost with similar MPG results. I'm running the stock manifold on mine, and my turbo certainly isn't the ideal one for the best MPG.

If you've just got new truck fever, don't let me interfere, I'm in the market for something else myself.