Originally Posted by
ozzy214
Personally I wouldn't mount the lights under the bumper like you did. Too easy to get damaged. I would personally bolt them to the frame rails on the bed up top. or go to harbor freight. They have a magnetic spot light you could put right up top on the cab.
Or even do like I did. I came across a 500 watt spot light from a house. I bolted it to the bed rail, then ran it right to the inverter.
Although it is a sweet set up. Nice truck. But I would look into ya mpg. Comign 10-15 years exp as a mech, something is wrong. Unless ya have chip it should be getting 15 and better. Especially with the turbo, which would make it more fuel efficient. Not less.
Take a look one day. Is it puffing a lot of black smoke when shifting or idling or stamping the gas hard? If it is, thats unburnt fuel, and ya definately have a problem. Like bad injectors leaking or something. Or its chipped and your not aware of it.
The lights are fine under the bumper, I never back into anything (bumper was bent when i got the truck), and I cant put them on the bed rail as the cap is on there.
And I know my way around Cummins diesels pretty well, been working on them a few years and doing performance mods just as long. I'm not a huge expert but I know more than most of the people that own or drive them. Don't take this the wrong way I don't want to come off as a jerk but it's hard to take any of your advice on my truck when you know little to nothing about my truck/engine. You can't put a chip on a mechanically injected truck which mine is (as are all Dodge diesels through 1998). The turbo is quite a bit larger than stock, therefore it doesn't do much of anything to help bottom end (which is where the truck usually operates). I have a lot of extra fuel going to it, yes it smokes on demand. It will black out a highway if I want it to. That's the key: If i want it to. It doesn't belch smoke all the time during normal driving. It's tame until I get on it hard then it's wide open throttle, tons of smoke and the turbo comes alive. The injectors are bigger than stock, I recently put them in. I am really familiar with my truck, I've done a ton of work on it (and dozens of others identical to it) and if it was chipped I'd know it, even though a chip wouldn't do a darn thing for it LOL... I didn't set it up for fuel mileage I set it up for power. I don't complain about the fuel mileage. The low gearing makes it use more fuel than most and that's ok, it'll pull a house up a 35* incline in overdrive at 45 mph.
I appreciate you wanting to help but it's not applicable advice and I am not looking to change the setup or I would already. Again it's all for power not fuel mileage. To me 12 mpg is fine for lugging 12,000 lbs around (truck and empty trailer, usually 16-18k loaded, fuel mileage does not drop when loaded). I'm quite content with what I get out of the deal.
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