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Originally Posted by BSiple
How would the Ecoboost do at say 9,000 feet or so? It takes every bit of my 6.0L Powerstroke in the Excursion to pull my 26 foot fully loaded toy hauler (80 gallons of water, 25 gallons of gas, toys, etc.).
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Road Test Review: 2011 Ford F-150 FX2 3.5-liter EcoBoost V-6, Part 1 - PickupTrucks.com News
"Our drive route covered almost 2,100 miles, from Norco, Calif., just off Interstate 15 east of Los Angeles to Colorado’s Eisenhower Pass on I-70 in the Rocky Mountains – the highest point on the U.S. interstate highway system. In between, we crossed elevations from 200 feet above sea level to 11,000 feet, from the floor of the Mojave Desert to Alpine forests. Driving across terrain this varied, there’s no place for an engine to mask performance gaps. It’s the longest, toughest road test we’ve ever done."
"Doubts about towing comfort started to ease after we hitched up one of the trucks to an enclosed car hauler ballasted to 9,000 pounds. We used our Elite Eaz-Lift weight-distributing hitch’s height-adjustable ball and the trailer’s height-adjustable hitch to ensure the truck sat almost level with about 12 percent tongue weight (about 1,100 pounds) pushing down on its rear. We measured the gross combined weight of the FX2 plus trailer at 14,500 pounds, or 95 percent of its maximum GCW."
"The F-150 with the trailer had no problem pulling Cajon, finding its sweet spot in 4th gear in tow/haul mode at about 3,000 rpm and 60 mph to provide power as needed to get around slower traffic. The empty truck held 5th but downshifted to 4th or 3rd for passing....... As soon as we crested the top of Cajon and the highway flattened out, the F-150 quickly shifted into 6th gear to lug at around 1,800 rpm at 60 mph up to 1,950 rpm at 70 mph."
"On I-70 in Colorado, on the same route we did our Rumble in the Rockies, we also ran the F-150 pulling the 9,000-pound trailer. We were stunned by how well it pulled at such high elevation on the 7 percent grade to the Eisenhower Tunnel. It was so strong that we had to start testing at 10,000 feet to ensure the rig didn’t climb the hill at an unsafe speed at wide open throttle. The EcoBoost F-150 ran the quarter-mile in 27.83 seconds at 50.83 mph – more than enough to keep up with or pass traffic. That’s a performance we don’t think could be easily matched by a non-turbo gas engine, even a large-displacement V-8.
Now, compare that time to how the truck-and-trailer pair performed on Davis Dam’s shallower 5 percent grade at only 2,000 feet of elevation, where it’s easier to gulp oxygen to feed the engine. Here, it ran the quarter-mile in 24.56 seconds at 58.47 mph – not much slower than it did in the Rockies.
The EcoBoost’s Davis Dam time is also faster than what we measured in the 5.0-liter V-8 F-150 with a different 9,000-pound trailer (25.06 seconds at 55.46 mph).
On level ground, the EcoBoost F-150 and trailer covered the quarter-mile in 21.02 seconds at 67.21 mph and did zero to 60 mph in only 16.36 seconds (compared with 16.85 seconds for the 5.0-liter V-8)."
"EcoBoost also works well if you’re going to regularly tow a heavy trailer at high altitude because its performance is only matched by today’s heavy-duty diesels in that environment."
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Also is the transmission in the Ecoboost the Torqueshift or whatever Ford is calling it now?
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It's a six speed SelectShift. Basically a lighter duty version of the diesel's TorqueShift with wider spreads in the gear ratios.