| 2007 Dodge Ram Buildup left Side Angle
Last month, in our quest to find some hidden mileage benefits from ordinary upgrades, we bolted an S&B cold-air intake onto our '071/2 Dodge's 6.7L Cummins. We were rewarded with a slight bump in perceived power and fuel economy to the tune of about 0.75 mpg, despite the fact that we left every other piece of factory hardware in place.
This time around we're looking to improve our Mega Cab's looks and functionality by installing a SnugTop Xtra Vision fiberglass truck cap. While there are many choices when selecting a bed cap manufacturer, few can match the quality construction, user-friendly features, and great looks offered by SnugTop. For our Mega Cab, we chose the company's Xtra Vision model, with large rear and sliding side glass, removable side screens, a full headliner, locking rear window (with a flush-mounted rotary latch), folding front window so you can quickly and easily drop the front window for cleaning the truck cab's rear glass, and more. The company took our order and, based on our factory paint code, painted our new shell to match our truck's metallic black hue in short time
But before we could have the shell installed at SnugTop's facility in Long Beach, California, we had to address the fact that our new shell wouldn't work with our factory over-the-rail bedliner. We considered cheesing out by either cutting up our factory liner or tossing in a cheap under-the-rail drop-in unit, but in our experience, it's hard to beat the headache-free durability, strength, and convenience of a Line-X spray-in bedliner system. About a week before our shell installation, we headed down to Line-X of Huntington Beach, California, where Marcel Venable oversaw the application of the spray-in liner for our truck.
And what of the hidden benefits? It's argued that the improved aerodynamics of the truck cap will show a marked improvement in mileage. In fact, SnugTop claims it has seen increases in fuel mileage up to 2 mpg on some vehicles based on its independent research. In our case, the results were quite noticeable. Not only did we turn our bed into dry, secure storage, but our mileage jumped from an average of 16.3 mpg to 17.3 mpg.
The Mileage ReportHere's the running tally for each installment of this series. Mileage numbers are generated on the same 250-mile mixed freeway and city street circuit and are hand-calculated by noting miles driven and fuel used from the same pump at the same fuel station. Numbers are the average of at least three test circuits.
Stock
15.55 MPGS&B Cold Air Intake
16.31 MPGS&B Cold Air Intake + Snugtop Xtra Vision
17.30 MPG Hidden Benefit To Date
1.75 MPG
