Fuel economy, smoke at altitude

[jungledave]

I have an 06 Mega cab 3500 srw 6 speed. 60,000 miles. I used to get 16 MPG highway at 75 mph and around 16 around town. I am now getting 15 if I am lucky at 75 and 15 in town, maybe. It only got 13 pulling my drag boat to Missouri. I always made 14 pulling the boat. I did take it to the dealer for excessive smoke, it really puts out a lot of smoke here at my 7000 ft altitude. Of course the dealer blamed it on the air filter, predictable. How do I get the dealer to actually look at the truck and see if it has a bad injector??? One more note. The engine has a pretty noticable tick since shortly after it was new.

 

[blacksheepdiesel]

Dirty air or fuel filter is the first place I'd start looking. Do you have a fuel psi gauge to tell you when the filter is dirty? Does it start hard? If so it is a good indicator of an injector going bad. The best way to test the injectors is to take them out and have a diesel injection shop test them on a test stand. The dealer does not have the equipment to do this.

Godspeed,
Trent

 

[jungledave]

Air and fuel filters are fine. I really over maintain my truck. Just a chicken poop tech who just looked at the filter minder like it is accurate. Just blamed it on the easiest thing possible with no effort. Starts and runs fine.

 

[HBarlow]

A Dodge dealer with a trained and knowledgeable Cummins engine tech can perform an engine performance test using the Dodge plug in computer. I can't remember the precise name of that test but I had one done on my high mileage '06 several years ago. The test took less than one hour to run and the dealer charged me about $125 to perform it.

IIRC the procedure tested each injector and basically determined if each injector and each cylinder was producing power equal to the other five. Maybe one of the Dodge dealer Cummins techs will add to my comment with the correct name of the test and a better description.

My '06 always had a ticking sound from one or more injectors that seemed to be louder at some times. The truck had 230k miles on it with original injectors when I sold it.

 

[BarryG]

Not sure if it has started in the Springs or not but I ran across winter fuel in the southwestern portion of the state two weeks ago and thought it was a bit early for that but there was a big sign on the pump advertising it which could explain your mpg. Wouldnt explain the smoke, I have a 2nd gen and it smokes year round never noticed a difference in smoke due to fuel.