Quote:
Originally Posted by dieseldawg142
super glad you got your "bug out buddy" back, i'd be going nuts not knowing where my dawgs were...
sorry for your loss as well, my mom passed in 2018, it's never easy.
and i'll bet your a torque junky now, nice step up from the five three. that eight one looks like a piece of jewelry in your blaze-how is your gas consumption now?.....aw who cares about mpg's anyways.....  |
I tell you what, that pooch is a lot more faithful than my ex. Drove around for 2 solid days looking for her and probably would have lost my sanity had she not turned up. It was a pretty good sign if I stuck around something worse was going to happen so I hit the gas and split. Not my kind of way of doing things, but I did and it's behind me.
Losing my Mom was a gut punch but it was a much better option than to continue watch her degrade with ALS as she did. That was a big reason behind going to AZ so that I could clear my head, bond with the pooch, and take a lot of time looking out the best picture window as we plodded through the desert landscape. I'm pretty sure I got a clear sign from my Mom out there that it was ok to start over. The entire trip and the damage I put into the truck was totally worth those precious few minutes.
Torque junky is a good way to describe it. The first couple of weeks I drove it like a pissed off teenager and banged gears like Ronnie Sox on the strip. Fun for sure, not so keen on the old wallet. It's awful thirsty when leaned on hard. Like 8 mpg hard. Surprisingly if the truck is driven like an adult it doesn't get any worse mileage than the 5.3 I took out. Typical average running around town, back and forth to work was in the high 12's to mid 13's pretty consistently. I've seen as high as 16 going to Moab from Denver last year. That was driving straight into the Rockies climbing 3 solid passes in that stretch. That's no joke either. I've repeated that this year. Though once out on the Flats following Larry out of Grand Junction with an 80mph speed limit in Utah we might be doing 90 at times. Back to single digits again.
The big difference in power is really felt in the mountains obviously. The nv4500 helps in that I'm the one in charge of what gear to be. But having more torque off idle than the 5.3 made at peak makes the biggest improvement. Mountain passes before had to be tackled in shuttling the 700 between 2nd and 3rd gear to keep the engine wound up in the meat of the torque curve. Now, if traffic or the road allows I can climb passes in 5th in most cases. The steepest ones might require a short kick in 4th as the 4.10 gears in the axle keep the cruise rpm on the low side. But overall it's a kick in the pants the truck needed to make it fun to drive and much less like you have to beat on it like it owed me money. I will say this the pull from 2nd to 3rd is fun. 3rd to 4th is pretty fun too, though it's usually exceeding most local speed limits by the time you are pulling the shifter to 4th.
Its almost silly it moves as quickly as it does despite the weight and aerodynamics of a barn door.