Looking for some advice, I have a 2004 F150 Lariat 5.4 4x4, we just purchased a travel trailer. The weight of the trailer is 6,000 lbs dry. My truck is rated for 7,200 GVWR. My question is when towing the travel trailer on straight roads the truck does fine, when going up hills it struggles. Looking for input on some non expensive mod's (under $1000) that will help until my funds allow me to upgrade to a F250. I have been doing some research on a programmer (sct), a cold air intake, and a magnaflow (muffler only). Would like some input if these would be good, or what would be better.

 

A tuner would be the best to help with towing. I doubt the muffler would do anything that you would notice other then a nice sound. Also depending on what gears you have you could upgrade to 3.73. I tow a 6500lb TT with my truck (3.55 gears) and it does great, but the truck has never seen a hill in its life.

P.s. GVWR is not the towing capacity of the truck, it is the payload rating of the truck. The towing capacity should be around 8000lbs

 

The tuner will be the best bang for your buck.
Have no experience with SCT but do have an Edge Evo on my truck and it made considerable difference.

 

Tuner is best bang of rthe buck.

Keep in mind that simply upgrading to a superduty will not make it any better. In fact if you upgrade and run the 5.4l it will actually be worse since the F250 is a heavier truck with the same engine. You would have a little better gears though.

The other option as noted is changing gears, this is dependent on what you have now though.

Going up hills with a heavy load will never be an easy thing, unless you go diesel. My suggestion is pick up a little speed as you approach the hills and back off as you go up. Learn to accept a little drop in speed and a little higher rpm as you go up the grade.

It could be much worse. Our 5.4l has a decent torque curve that is fairly low in the rpm range. My previous tow vehicle was a Silverado and it had to rev much higher to produce similiar results.

Do you know what gears you currently have?

 

I have 3.73 limited slip gears.

 

How's the maintenance upkeep? Have you changed the plugs/coils, fuel filter? Clean the throttle body and mass air flow sensor? All that helped my truck run better.

I run an Edge Evolution programmer and it helps out a lot as well.
Your owners manual will tell you how much weight you can tow based on cab configuration and rear end.

 

Due to the first owner running the truck low on oil (I believe) i had to put a new long block engine in at 75,000 miles. At that time I put in new spark plugs. I cleaned the throttle body and mass air flow sensor and changed the fuel filter right before the engine change (in hopes of not needing a new engine). The COP's are all original except for two. The truck currently has 145,000 Miles and I change the oil and oil filter every 3,000 miles (still a little gun shy).

 

I would go with a tuner and unless you are on flat land, turn the OD off.

Make sure you have a transmission cooler, which I think should have came stock if you have to tow package.

I pull heavier than that on the weekends without any problem with 98k on the OEM plugs and COPS. (getting changed over my Xmas days off this year)