Picked up the new truck today.

Cummins12V98 wrote:
Looks really good. Interesting on the 5th gear. When traveling thru Oregon around Salem to Eugene area experiment with instant average fuel economy in 5th and 6th gears. My 11 Dually would tow in 6th on flat to rolling hills but I determined 5th was the best gear for fuel economy. The RPM's in 5th with the 3:42's is nearly the same as the 4:10's in 6th.

Glad you mentioned Donna's I will get weights from them to compare to the DOT scales.

If I took it out of T/H it would shift to 6th. This was a short test tow and I was looking at lots of things. Given that at 80 MPH it turns around 1750 RPM, It caught my eye that it was at a similar RPM range towing at 60-65. So it was in 5th gear not 6th. Will learn more when I do our first real trip somewhere.

The other thing to work on is tire inflation for the LT275/70R18E's.

Lbs Combined
35 = 4140
40 = 4540
45 = 4940
50 = 5360
55 = 5680
60 = 6040
65 = 6390
70 = 6720
75 = 7060
80 = 7280

So with the front axle at 5100 pounds and that is not going to change much, it does not need the placard 60 lbs inflation. 55 lbs will give over 500 lbs extra.

The rear weight of 5920 will go up a few hundred pounds when I load the rest of the snowbird supplies, so 70 lbs inflation will provide a similar 500 lb buffer in capacity.

Another interesting thing to note is the truck was weighing in at 11,020 with a 11,700 GVWR. So if I load wife and maybe 3 or 4 hundred move pounds of gear in the truck, I will be within a couple hundred pounds of GVWR. Given that the truck weighed in a 8220 coming out of the transfer station/dump, one would be hard pressed to tow a 17K trailer and stay under GVWR. Might be able to stay under RGAWR, but wound be over GVWR - yet again!!! Any future trailer should be in the max weight area of 14.5K.

Chris