Headerpower
Registered User
Very good week for me, I finally got to get back to the prairies to pick up my 1948 F-68, (the Canadian model of the F-3). This truck was bought new by my grandfather after WWII when vehicles just became available to the public. It only has 61,000 miles on it, spent its entire life on the farm until it was parked in an old garden plot 20 years ago. My plan is to restore it back to original.
I had been hesitant to go get this truck, I am a aircraft mechanic, and tend to be a worry wart about mechanical stuff, so I wasn't that confident in the ability of my truck to get the job done. This truck weighs at least 4500 lbs, my truck loaded is 7000, and the trailer is 2000, so est GCVW was 13,500 lbs. I live on the coast, and hauled a jeep rock crawler type unit back for another fellow, so if you know the Coquihalla, east bound is one SOB of a hill, ended up in 1 st and 3000 rpm at the top 9-10% grade, 1150-1200 EGT. Well, after that my truck seemed to perform bettter than ever. It would maintain power in OD better than ever, and managed to do most of the rest of the climbs in 3 rd gear, 2000-2600 rpm and maintain 80 km/hr. It wouldn't do that before!
My theory is that I was so hot and pushing all the limits that I blew a lot of carbon, soot or whatever off of the valves and pistons, or - I had it hot enough to melt the pistons down to re-size them to the cylinder bore.
So too make a long story short-er, I am very happy with the performace of my truck with the headers, no turbo, and the modifications I've done. But in truth, if I were towing this kind of weight all the time, I think I would swap out the diff gears for a set of 3.7's or whatever. I wouldn't want to sacfiice the milage I get by going down to the 4.10's. Just my thoughts!! This trip was a total of 2400 kilometers and burned 489 ltr's of fuel- according to my figuring thats 11.6 mpg US, 13.8 mpg IMP. Not too bad IMHO.
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I had been hesitant to go get this truck, I am a aircraft mechanic, and tend to be a worry wart about mechanical stuff, so I wasn't that confident in the ability of my truck to get the job done. This truck weighs at least 4500 lbs, my truck loaded is 7000, and the trailer is 2000, so est GCVW was 13,500 lbs. I live on the coast, and hauled a jeep rock crawler type unit back for another fellow, so if you know the Coquihalla, east bound is one SOB of a hill, ended up in 1 st and 3000 rpm at the top 9-10% grade, 1150-1200 EGT. Well, after that my truck seemed to perform bettter than ever. It would maintain power in OD better than ever, and managed to do most of the rest of the climbs in 3 rd gear, 2000-2600 rpm and maintain 80 km/hr. It wouldn't do that before!
My theory is that I was so hot and pushing all the limits that I blew a lot of carbon, soot or whatever off of the valves and pistons, or - I had it hot enough to melt the pistons down to re-size them to the cylinder bore.
So too make a long story short-er, I am very happy with the performace of my truck with the headers, no turbo, and the modifications I've done. But in truth, if I were towing this kind of weight all the time, I think I would swap out the diff gears for a set of 3.7's or whatever. I wouldn't want to sacfiice the milage I get by going down to the 4.10's. Just my thoughts!! This trip was a total of 2400 kilometers and burned 489 ltr's of fuel- according to my figuring thats 11.6 mpg US, 13.8 mpg IMP. Not too bad IMHO.
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