>I am thinking about buying a used 2500 suburban for use as a tow vehicle.
>
>
>The only thing that worries me is gas milage. Either my wife or I will
>have to drive it daily and if the mileage is really low it will be a bad
>move. The truck we are looking at a 454.
>
>
>Anyone out there have any idea what the gas milage for this setup would
>be? If you have any other insight on this vehicle I would like to hear
>that as well.
If you get a big block, at least you shouldn't end up with a 700R4 tranny,
which means it will probably last OK towing. Mileage will be similar to a
small block, at least when they are loaded, but you'll have decent
power. If you were going to use it as a car, then the small block might be
preferable, but for towing the big block is the way to go. At least with a
Sub.
There has been a nice thread on diesels that sprouted from this, and I can
add some to that. Way back when, I bought a used 1983 Ford diesel. This
was a 6.9 non-turbo. I ended up swearing off both diesels and Fords due to
this truck. It was like a Microsoft 1.0 version. Beta to anyone
else. Nothing about it worked well, except that it got decent mileage. It
stranded us several times over the 4 years I owned it. About halfway
through, I put a turbo on it, and that cured the power problem. All in
all, it was a pile of junk. I hope I haven't been ambiguous on
this.... Oh, it wouldn't start without having the block heater hooked up
(for hours) if the temperature was under about 30 degrees. Real pain when
we needed to go somewhere.
After a couple of years with a car that I trusted to get itself to and from
events ('88 CRX), we were back in the market for a tow vehicle. I looked
at half ton trucks, and actually might have bought one if a good one had
shown up. I am very happy that didn't happen. A friend has a '93 Dodge
Cummins 1-ton dually, and he claimed he could hop in it on a zero-degree
morning, fire it up, and drive to work, no problem. He also got something
like 20 MPG towing. He also didn't have problems with it. All of these
convinced me to get another smoker. A little research told me I needed a
Dodge. The Chevies of that era are a joke (they proudly announced in their
brochure that they were the only company that would put their turbo diesel
in a half ton; their gas 6-cyl had more power!) My friend the Ford
mechanic pretty much warned me off of their products, at least for the
first 5 or 6 years of production. I wanted an extended cab, after living
with a couple of regular cabs for years. Dodge didn't have an X-cab in
1994, and the wait for a '95 was about 9 months due to the backlog. So I
was shopping for a used one. I decided what I needed was a '92-93 Dodge
X-cab 4X4 Cummins. Turns out that they were rather scarce. I shopped for
several months, and only saw one in our area, and they wanted $10K over
average retail. I put out a request on team.net for people to help me find
one, and one was located in Houston. SouthWorst flies from Albuquerque to
Houston at a not too outrageous price, so I went and got it. That was at
the end of 1994. I still have the truck. It had 60K on it when I got it,
and it is now a few hundred short of 180K. I keep wondering if I need to
worry about it becoming unreliable, but it shows no signs at all of
that. It has needed some regular maintenance, and I had to rebuild the
alternator at about 150K, but it has never even threatened to strand us,
and it happily drags the car around the country at whatever speed seems
appropriate. The CRX has been an excellent vehicle (about 160K miles now)
but this truck has been even better. I get 14-15 MPG towing, which
probably means something isn't quite right in the engine. It's always done
this (except the time I had the dealer work on it, and they managed to make
it get 11) so I figure it's not a reliability issue. It does point out the
one drawback I've seen to a diesel, and that is finding a competent
mechanic. Diesels run on black magic. There is no throttle butterfly -
it's wide open all the time. You give it whatever fuel you want it to use,
and that is what determines how much power it makes. Weird. It takes 13
quarts of oil. I buy Rotella-T at Sam's Club in gallons. It takes too
long to pour in 13 little quart bottles.... After a while a whiff of
diesel exhaust will remind you of going racing, so it will not be such an
unpleasant smell. A good snort of it will still make you sick (most dive
boats are diesels and the exhaust is right there blowing in your face when
you climb out - I keep wanting to like it, but I don't think it's possible).
Ever see a gasoline train? A gasoline semi truck? If you are hauling a
load for a long distance, diesel is the fuel of choice. They are even OK
to live with as a daily driver. Mine wants to be warmed up a bit before it
has to work hard, but it starts even if it is cold. Yes, they cost more to
buy, but if you are going to own it a while you'll more than make up the
difference. Ford does put diesels in Expeditions, though I don't know how
far they are de-tuned from the real trucks. Both Dodge and Ford de-tune
theirs for automagic trannies (which mine has). I understand Chevy has a
transmission that's up to the torque of the Isuzu they are selling; that
would be quite a change from what they've done for the past 20 years, but
it could be true.
There, that's more than you wanted to hear about this subject....
Paul and Meredith Brown
MR2: "Not the easiest car in the world to work on"
|