higher MPG

[Longhorn Man]

K&N is great for wearing down your bearings and cylinder walls due to the added dirt going into the engine.
Tornados have been proven to do nothing but drain your wallet.

[longbed67]

Originally Posted by Longhorn Man

K&N is great for wearing down your bearings and cylinder walls due to the added dirt going into the engine.
Tornados have been proven to do nothing but drain your wallet.

Couldn't agree more if you dont believe look up some peer reviewed research studies on it!

A good Tune Up the engine for sure using a wideband setup and monitor and depending on how much you romped on the engine when you drove it maybe complete a rebuild... I would definitely go with a stock 3.07 gear ratio or a 3.08 Richmond ring and pinion, and around a 30"to 31" tall tire in the rear even with a final drive of 1:1 on the tranny that will still get you down to some nice cruizing rpm's if you want to play around with different combinations go to
www.12bolt.com and go to the gearing calculator it is an easy to use excel file and allows you to put different tire sizes transmission and rear axle combinations and gives you a spreadsheet of everything you need to know. it is by far the easiest and best gearing calc I have ever used.

[oldgold70c10]

Originally Posted by Longhorn Man

K&N is great for wearing down your bearings and cylinder walls due to the added dirt going into the engine.
Tornados have been proven to do nothing but drain your wallet.

Can you elaborate?

[longbed67]

For those who wont go look it up here is the jist of it....

K&N Filters get their increased air flow through increasing the micron filter size of the material and when you look on a lock box setup using a K&N vs even a standard paper or Foam Filter the K&N yes flows more, but on the same note also allows more dirt to flow through, to the point that after a couple of hours of testing one can visually see dirt building up in the box. My friends dad works for a company that independently tested just about every filter type imaginable for use in their machinery just to see what was going to best protect the machinery at their facility cost aside the k&n allow the most dirt to get in and the oiled foam protected the best. That said the oiled foam was also the most restrictive, but not by much.

The tornado thing in actual dyno tests not done by that company has shown to decrease HP and when looking at total cfm of flow through a pipe has shown huge restriction in the amount of air allowed to pass through the pipe in the same time under the same conditions, the whole disturb the air and funnel it down in faster is a scheme that is catchy and sounds good to the buyer but doesnt actually work in real life. It is kind of like the concept of a cool looking fishing lure that catch's the fishermans eye but would never catch a fish.

[bucktruck68]

Thanks to all for the info. Funny how one discussion branches off into other topics. Which is very good. I have several things to think about but I have a good idea of the direction to go. I have some time before it arrives here but never to early to start the process. I'll keep you posted and hopefully post pics when i get it going.

[WorkinLonghorn]

If your mileage is that crappy with Normal Driving you know, not racing every car off of every stop or light, but just putting around, then before you spend a penny try cupping your hand over the end of the exhaust pipe and see if it is a steady vibration with occasional bigger puffs or if there is a regular big pulse that may indicate a miss. If you find a miss then you can hook up a tach or just pay close attention as you remove and replace spark wires one at a time and determine which cylinder is not contributing (RPMs don't go down when that plug wire is disconnected).
Post here if this is the case. If you have or can borrow a compression tester then check and write down the compression for each cylinder with all the plugs removed and the throttle wide open, cranking with a reasonably good battery.post results here.

[68gmsee]

Welcome to the site... All good responses above.

My experience with these old trucks that I've been driving since I turned 15 in 1958 is that you're not going to get very good gas mileage out of them. Yes, you can go from 9 to 12, 13 maybe 15 mpg with a tune up, rebuilding the engine or changing rear ends and transmission but that's still bad when gas is $3-$4 a gallon. For a youngster that means having to spend quite a bit of money just to go to school unless you live couple of miles from the school. My nephew found that out real quick. His part time work money was going strictly for gas.

You could modernize it to the new computer controlled engines and that would help or you could leave the truck the way your dad bought it so that the younger generation can experience what we old folks had to go through .