shortride

iTrader: (1)

BacFlip claims that their bed cover will improve fuel mileage. I put a A.R.E. tonneau cover on the last 2 F150's and didn't notice any fuel mileage improvement.

What's been your experience for those that have added a bed cover?

http://www.4are.com/fuel.php

kozal01

iTrader: (2)

i have noticed an increase in mileage in the trucks ive had bed covers on. also, my ranger doesnt get blown around on the highway in high cross winds with the bed cover on it.

manic5_2001

here we go!!!!

powerboatr

bring on mythbusters

they did tailgate up and down and up won out.....

now we need a setup with a top or no top
my 350 dually crew cab lost mpg with the cab height topper on, went from 14 to 13 mpg but she loooooked coooooooool

mikegs1952

Duck!!!

d_nelly78

I have one for the looks and to keep stuff dry. Things I have read on this are very vague and you wonder how objective people are. My thinking is, if you spend alot of time on the highway it may help a little and in the life of the truck it may pay for itself. Depending on how much you paid for the tonneau. I like to think my Tonnopro, which I paid 250 for, will pay for itself over the six years I plan on driving my truck. But to think a high dollar tonneau will pay for itself in gas savings is a stretch.

Bob_Mac

Agreed!

johnwill

interesting

ftrucktough

I love how that quote is from some no-name college and it doesn't state who the quote is from (i.e. not a well known professor or researcher). That quote could be from a technical paper written over-night by some kid who needed to finish his paper and just surfed the internet to come up with some numbers.

Ford's Jack Williams sounds like he is paid off too.

If these things truly increase MPG by 5-10%, that would be one easy way to increase MPG figures for the manufacturer. They would put them on the vehicle standard in order to raise the MPG ratings on the sticker! But they don't.

Sure, in certain situations you might see some benefit, but usually it will be negligible. I bet if Mythbusters did this in a better way.. like testing the same truck every day, day after day, they would get inconclusive results. To me, if you take a truck down a few runs of the highway with tailgate up/down/cover on in a single afternoon, there's not much of a story. What was the cross wind? Was the temperature changing? What was the humidity? etc...

Mr.Distance

In my humble teenage opinion... no.

You see, from watching mythbusters countless times, specifically the episode on tailgate up or tailgate down, I started to wonder about tonneaus too. When you put a tonneau on your truck, basically what you've just done is made a flat bed truck with no bed walls and no tailgate.

In the tests on mythbusters, its the tailgate being up AND the addition (even if they didn't mention it) of the bed walls being there to contain the vortex that's created by the wind flowing down over the cab and into the bed, being stopped by the tailgate to send it back up and right back down. That's what creates the vortex, which also shown in the mythbusters tests, is what allows air to flow over the bed and away from the truck without further compromising the aerodynamics of the truck. (If you want to call a moving brick aerodynamic.)

When you take away the element of the tailgate and the bed walls, what you've just done is taken away the two things that allow that vortex to be created and maintained. Now, by not giving that wind a place to create a vortex in along a much smaller height from top of cab to area the wind hits, (increasing what little aerodynamics you might have - if you don't have a tailgate) you WOULD get better fuel economy than if you had the tailgate down.

The MPG claims just don't logically make sense about a tonneau to me. Again, my humble opinion.