What's The BEST Half-Ton Truck Engine? Here’s Your Expert Buyer’s Guide!

guys welcome to another fun episode of tfl talking trucks i am andre smirnoff and with me nathan adlin guys thanks guys for joining us today on this episode we're gonna actually try to get to the bottom of this question which halftime full-size truck engine is the best and which one is the worst maybe i think we can encapsulate that by saying which one is the best for me because andre you got to admit a lot of people either underestimate or way overestimate the engines that they're getting in various trucks some people are only towing you know a couple thousand pounds and they're out there with a vehicle that can tow 10 12 14 000 pounds which is completely unnecessary and they paid a lot you know a lot more money so i think we're going to try to boil that down into what engines you can get with which truck yes and what they can do yes and because and this is very complicated we get a lot of questions from you guys because there's up to like 18 different options in half in the full-size half-ton segment so let's take those 18 engines and actually whittle it down to the core of it thank you for joining tfl talking trucks podcast if you love pickup trucks or big full-size suvs if you love trailering towing and going off-road this is the right place to be together we can make this podcast the most popular ever first of all a couple things guys we're not covering mid-sized trucks we're not covering heavy-duty trucks we're just covering half tons which is one of the most popular segments out there and there are a lot of automakers to choose from so we're talking about nissan toyota ford ram and general motors so we're going to combine chevrolet with gmc yeah for sure and let's start with toyota because let's start with the trucks that offers kind of the least amount of engine options correct uh and work to the most so yeah that's right so with toyota well first of all guys the tundra is as many of you know old like older than tommy old it is ancient and the platform is very old the engine and transmission and there's only one offering are quite old as well we're not saying it's bad it's actually an excellent truck but it is ancient andre tell us the details yeah this is the tundra sr5 and the reason why i'm saying sr5 it's basically an sr in fact those are their base trucks for the tundra right tundra for 2021 it's the same one like you were saying as it's been for the last well let's see 12 13 years although there's a big caveat they did refresh it several times at least twice they've added all the tech to it so the headlights and taillights adaptive cruise control so anyway the tundra is really cool but let's focus on the engines yeah right now it used to have more options right yeah yeah it used to have a six cylinder and there was a smaller displacement uh eight cylinder 4.7 yeah now we're talking about 5.7 liter v8 right they call it the i-force this is a really good engine i mean it's been also in the land cruiser for forever even some other trucks too right sequoia and tundra of course has had it for many many years toyota super has it too kidding lexus lx inspired by that engine really um yeah so so this is a really cool very powerful engine and that in the tundra it produces 381 horsepower and 401 pound feet of torque it's made it to a six-speed automatic this is the only powertrain option you can get in the tundra right yes and so let's talk about pricing a little bit because price is very important obviously when you're shopping and also capability right yeah totally so you can get a base uh tundra with it comes with a v8 for about 35 365 bucks to start this is kind of an sr or an sr5 grade tundra and if you guys are watching this on tfl talk youtube channel uh we of course distribute the podcast anywhere where podcasts you know can be downloaded right but also on youtube you know we have um you probably can see this image behind him on the screen behind me uh so and capability wise right some capability this tundra is rated to tow about up to ten thousand pounds which i think is sort of a overriding theme throughout a lot of these trucks is that ten thousand is sort of the the sweet spot um a maximum for some and not in some cases they don't even quite make that but the thing about the tundra and one thing i want to put out there yes that is a fairly hefty base price but consider what you're getting a lot of the other trucks that are going to be on this list have a base model v6 of some sort or six cylinder engine or even a four cylinder engine in one case this is a beefy v8 and it's standard and as such you're getting that for 35 grand as opposed to some of the less expensive trucks where you get the less powerful v6s yeah and of course it's available with two wheel drive or or four-wheel drive wheel drive so yeah you you are getting a very powerful v8 engine for that price and the way i look at the tundra and then coming up the titan the nissan titan is if you want to tell like you're saying just under 10 000 pounds let's say you have a camping trailer it weighs about seven seven to eight thousand pounds right boat or maybe you're taking you know or atvs or horses somewhere right so that's kind of the sweet spot for the tundra some of the other trucks are rated way higher yeah we'll talk about that a little bit later indeed we will so so for those types of tasks this engine is really good but there is one achilles heel which is the fuel efficiency it is one of the least efficient trucks on this list yeah and it partly has to do with the rear differential ratio it's a 430 it's a really burly big low geared rear end yeah really actually pretty good for off-roading yeah it's really good for crawling slow speed moving but it's not great for efficiency and you can see that because it's basically currently the lowest rated uh yeah vehicle in this class indeed it is now on top of that i want to add one more minor issue which is unfortunately even with the trd pro you can't get a electronic locking rear diff like you can on almost every other truck on this list which is a real shame but otherwise in terms of just a stout hardcore really reliable truck and we say it a lot and it's not just because of you know what we hear it's because what we've witnessed it is a beefy strong truck and also a good value even the trd pros they're around with 54 000 bucks yeah that's with a couple of options yeah so that's still good value considering considering that you can be easily well in 70 80 000 for some of these other trucks with a similar type of off-road package yeah so let's switch gears to the next one the titan switching gears to the titan now the nissan titan has recently been heavily revised and amongst the things that it has there are two different models but i consider personally speaking if you consider both of them half tons then it makes things a lot easier so they have the xd model and they have the regular half ton model of the titan now the xd model is very similar to the regular one except it has a much beefier frame and we're going to get to that in a moment but that's why it's slightly above the toyota because technically it gives you more choices in terms of truck platform yeah absolutely and the engine we're talking about once again one engine option and nissan will tell you this is the most powerful base v8 and they're right with premium fuel 400 horsepower yep 413 pound feet of torque if you don't want to use premium fuel you could still run the engine happily um and get 390 horsepower that is correct and here's the thing about that engine and um it's something that i've said a million times andre's heard me say it a million times it is one of my favorite v8s that is currently being produced by any truck maker in the business it's extremely flexible it's relatively efficient it has an amazing exhaust note stock not you know you don't have to add a trd exhaust you know anything like that it is just an altogether very good powerful engine yes that's absolutely true and it's now made it to a nine-speed automatic truck um and you and i have towed long distance with previous titans yes and these titans as well the latest one and the nine speed is improvement in many ways we had a long term uh if you guys recall we did it uh called the titan trials we had a yellow trd uh pro 4x yes and it's it was a great truck but one of the things that andre and i both agreed on is that the transmission it's the seven speed it wasn't great this new nine speed fixes some of those problems yeah and basically was an issue where uh when towing upgrades we're in colorado we're based in colorado so we have to tow in the mountains quite a lot and the older seven speed just had kind of these gaps where the rpm ranges differed quite greatly between gears the nine speed kind of fills those gaps in a little bit more so i don't know if it's perfect i wouldn't call it like the perfect setup but it improves it greatly it does help yeah and once again the fuel efficiency is not the best it's near the bottom kind of where the tundra is it's it's a little bit better than the tundra yeah it's a little bit better than times especially with the nine speed they gained a little bit of efficiency there and also same capability approximately the same capability with a bass titan and the titan xd uh this like the like you mentioned it's a separate platform right it's actually a heavier frame longer wheelbase you get a six and a half foot bed nissan titan calls it kind of like the ultimate uh towing package you know how every manufacturer has a towing package right but but nissan gives you actually a different truck basically by doing this nissan if you consider the xd a half ton which i think they really should it suddenly makes that truck into one of the better towing trucks in its class we've towed with several xd's now remember they no longer have the cummins uh five-liter diesel v8 available longer offer yeah it's they got rid of it last year yeah which which is a shame for some of us but the bottom line is that that that same 5.6 liter v8 is available well not available at standard on the titan xd as well the good news is it's a much better towing truck so if you're serious about towing but you want to get something that's much closer to a half ton truck the xd is not a bad choice yeah and the pricing is also pretty attractive i'm showing on my screen here a king cab titan 2021 model once again all these trucks we're talking about the 2021s right and the price is about 37 785 so it's a little bit more for this particular one this the base s model two-wheel drive than the than the tundra as far as asking price uh but you know you're still getting that latest interior you know the latest infotainment which has been greatly improved right and all of course all the safety features as well uh that are built in and et cetera et cetera so right once again if you're towing under 10 000 pounds the titan and the tundra are really good choices because they offer v8 engines very powerful and very good for towing that's right now by the way real quickly just on a quick note with both of these vehicles under the situation we're currently finding ourselves under which is covid you might be able to score a pretty good deal on some of these trucks nissan hasn't sold a lot of the titans and toyota is moving to an all-new tundra in the near future i know that toyota dealerships are historically difficult to deal with but you might be able to get a much better deal on a truck because they want to move that inventory out to bring in the new stuff which should be coming pretty soon right yeah totally um yeah actually i think 21s are in dealers basically across the board yeah if you're looking this is at the end of 2020 calendar year yeah right we're when we're recording we're literally at the end of it yeah in december and already all the 2021 models as far as i know already dealers even the ford f150 the 2021s are arriving finally but basically like today yeah but we'll get over that we'll talk about that in a little bit so let's move on from the nissan to the next vehicle uh next automaker on the list which is ram yes ram now we're stepping up from basically one powertrain option to five that is correct so how are you supposed to choose what are you supposed to do well keep in mind that ram has become much more competitive over say the past 10 years and they are now threatening not just general motors but also ford not just with sales but also with the amount of engines you can choose the power trains and everything else they've managed to really make a cohesive package and build trucks that are better than the ones that they replace they're much more reliable they're more stout they're more powerful obviously in some cases like the trx way more powerful we'll get to that in a moment so let's start with the base engine because that is one of their most reliable engines out there and it's been around for a while and they've shoved it into almost everything including front-wheel drive cars i mean it's it's it's in jeeps it's in and everything yeah except for fiat it's not in any fiat which is in dodge cars it's in wranglers yeah it's in everything we're talking about the 3.6 yeah the pentastar leader v6 the pentastar it's available as a base motor in the ram 1500 and we're talking about this new generation they still have what's called the ram classic right the ram classic is a previous generation ram that's available in the regular cab the two-door and also something called the warlock which is kind of their you know kind of a fun package they know how to use cool names yeah it helps it's actually their pr is brilliant when it comes to really cool names yeah ram marketing is is is uh on top of it but the tradesmen the new generation tradesmen for 2021 starts at about 32 000 245 for the shorter quad cab two-wheel drive model so 32 000. this is less than 100 this is less than the titan but once again it's a v6 exactly so you're not getting that you know capability of the v8s but you are getting a very stout engine yeah you are and you're getting just over 300 horsepower the torque is not great you know it's under 300 pound-feet of torque right and we've told with this engine many many times if you remember like about seven years ago we even towed my boat my 20 foot my 22 foot ski boat with with this engine the v6 it was 20 feet and then we towed so hard with it it became 22 feet it stretched sorry i misspoke no that's all right but the uh so this engine is good like you said it's good for a runabout truck yeah so if you're using kind of a as a fleet truck as a work truck delivery truck delivery truck you're delivering parts or or things or parcels uh it's a really good motor because it's relatively efficient it's very simple like you said it's proven itself it has proven itself yeah but when we're towing on the ice gauntlet you know our world's toughest towing test or towing the boat through the mountains for example it has a tendency to start to heat up yeah um so and actually a lot of ram engines do this and i don't know if it's kind of like what they do it's kind of a built-in thing but just so you know we're not talking about overheating we're just saying it heated up so no error messages no like pulling power and no limp no steam leaping from the engine no steam but they just tend to run hot and a lot of you guys commented about it and you guys said you know we don't like this they also run at really high rpm because they scream up the hill the v6 has to make its power it makes us power at the higher end of the rpm like you said right so you do have to rev rev it quite high to get the power but let's step up to the next engine right right so if you're not towing a lot the v6 is for you right but now if you want to tow they have the 5.7 liter hemi which they've had for many many years yeah and now there's two versions of it technically that is correct now bear in mind that we've actually had a lot of experience with a 5.7 liter hemi specifically on the truck that we had for about a year right we had our ram rebel with the 5.7 and it also had a very unique system which unfortunately i don't think is that spectacular but it's a real shame because the engine i think is pretty damn great and that is their uh etorque system right yeah so once again so let's talk about price right we already mentioned the base price for the truck around 33 grand now you can get the hemi for 1795. so for about 1800 bucks so on top of that you step up to the v8 from the v6 and then if you want the e-torque system and the etorque system is now priced at about 200 extra so it's not a big step up so what does it give you it doesn't really give you any real world fuel efficiency we we tested that no it it it doesn't really do that we found we found that out uh what it does is it does start stop so when you come to a complete stop the engine will shut off and this electric motor that's attached to the uh belt the serpentine belt system so it's a mild hybrid it's it cannot use the electric motor to move the truck but it can help you just move for the first inch like they're saying right you know just kind of get going and it actually smooths out the experience a lot of people hate auto stop start system because there's shutter yeah off and then on this makes it smooth i will agree with that it does smooth things out and on top of that basically what the system is doing is when you get a lot of mass in a truck and you're at an absolute stop and you start accelerating that's where you drain a lot of gas because you're moving you know five six seven thousand pounds right well with this system it kind of gets you just a little tiny touch of momentum and then everything kicks on and if you're doing stop and go traffic a lot that can be something that may help you in terms of mpg and possibly the durability of your engine we don't know for sure this is sort of theorized by the people over at ram the bottom line is is that for 200 extra are you better off with this system personally speaking i don't think so i think the 5.7 on its own hooked up to the 8-speed which is standard um is a fantastic combination yeah and by the way all these engines we're talking about for ram are eight speeds made it to an eight speed that is correct um and so yeah so the v8 is rated higher towing about twelve thousand pounds now where the v6 ram is around what seven to eight thousand pounds right um this is now 12 in certain configurations our rebel was rated at 11 000 and we towed that and it turned quite well once again the hemi on the eye gauntlet also tends to heat up on the oil side the transmission always stays relatively cool the coolant the coolant engine coolant itself stays relatively cool but the oil is what heats up yeah but once again we didn't have any catastrophic failure or anything crazy like that no no overheating or anything like that it did fine so now uh so that's good but what if you want the diesel ah well we are now on our technically the third generation right of uh of their diesel is it ecodiesel it's a equidistant gen three absolutely generation three now for a lot of you out there who are diesel fans you'll understand that this is not a big chunky diesel this is a small displacement diesel in fact the remaining vehicles on our list all have three liter diesels one of which is in a very different configuration and these are very efficient they have decent torque but they're not super beefy toe engines if you want that you have to move up to a three-quarter you know ton class one-ton class you want big diesels yes this is a three liter like you said um the power rating is pretty stout they upgraded the power rating yeah um it's now up to 480 pound feet of torque it's very very torquey they also changed the kind of the internal structure of it they tried to make it a little bit quieter a little bit smoother they have exhaust gas recirculation now too on the high pressure side and the low pressure side right if you look at the turbocharger it's very complex try to understand it twice and i'm still struggling to understand all that stuff for those of you who are wondering about the previous scandals and everything else with emissions that's all been taken care of they've they're now you know they have an agreement with the government they've taken care of you know certain you know financial issues with that as well but this new powertrain is supposed to be really clean and really efficient yeah and that's why they're doing this egr exhaust gas for circulation of course def the diesel exhaust fluid of course has to be there right and then this so they've done all this it's a five thousand dollar option no so it's that's over the base truck over the base truck right so if you stepping up from the gas v6 to this diesel it's about four thousand nine nine five still comes with an eight speed um i've tested a few of these and i think you've driven a couple of these two quite a few actually yeah and i think it's an improvement over the previous diesel they had it still has a little bit of lag i think you know as soon as you get going it takes the turbo kind of i'm not sure exactly what it is it may be the throttle mapping i think it's just a spool up is that it's all uh you know yeah so it's not you know it's not my favorite diesel in this class we're going to talk more about diesels in a second um so if you if i would recommend the diesel in general in a halftime truck if you drive a lot of miles yes and if you're driving highway miles this is where the diesel shines if you're in the city yeah the diesel is not so great right um because you know it's a little bit louder it's you know anyway but on the highway it shines and if you're towing you know under it's its maximum which what is around uh it's still it's still pretty good it's like 11 11 or 10 10 it's it's it's just above 10. now i recall that we've towed in the past with the older ones like around 5000 pounds and it was really good it did a great job but once you start straining it and everything else you lose a lot of that efficiency but here's the good news with these small displacement diesels the range is impressive if you're driving cross-country a diesel like this could make a lot of sense yeah in fact like our friends like wayne gergis from clean mpg yeah uh i think sometimes you can even get a thousand miles of range if you drive it gingerly oh well wayne is ridiculous he's an awesome guy but he he does you know all the feathers that drives 35 and a you know 65. the thing is is that um there is one more thing a really good friend of mine bought the first generation outdoorsman um so four wheel drive and everything else and he has that and he had to go and do the recall which actually took some power out of the uh engine which was a shame but in over 120 000 miles he hasn't had a single problem with that other than that recall he's and he drives it really really viciously so just so you know i mean i know some people have said that they're not that reliable but i've heard some pretty good stories too so i think it's a give and take on that yeah so before we move on to that next manufacturer we have to talk about the final engine and this is a beast uh i have it on the screen now it's just about to get to dealers it's not at dealers yet yeah by the time you guys see this recording or hear this recording it's probably just a week or two away from hitting the dealerships and that is the ram trx with the big beefy awesome hellcat v8 yeah and this is a 6.2 supercharged 702 horsepower 650 pound-feet of torque and this is a true off-road truck it's aimed directly at the ford raptor yeah i mean as far as the specs are concerned it's a wide body kit it's got special suspension it's got all the little technical details and it's also very expensive extraordinary very powerful but it's now over 700 horsepower this is what we're starting to call the super truck it is the fastest truck i've ever driven from the factory yeah and we've had many videos with it we actually put it on a drag race we took it off from drag races yes we told with it so it's it's not a towing machine so not really no and then we'll explain why so why can't i mean it's payload and it's towing they're not that impressive right so max towing is about 8 100 pounds payload can be you know between 1300 pounds and about 960 pounds so and the reason for that is uh the special suspension primary primary reason because the springs are a little bit softer they're matched to these active amazing shocks from bilstein right right and because the springs are a little bit softer it's meant to you know soak up the big bumps and even the jumps that the truck can do right uh because of that uh it's not really meant to support a lot of weight that is correct in fact you have the very same problem or issue or whatever you want to call it with the ford raptor and once again that's most off-road uh packages will actually take away from payload and towing yeah and that's true across the board you're absolutely right and then finally um well fuel efficiency is it's another story uh we won't mention that i was getting between i think nine and a half and 11. i think i think you actually lose mpg as it sits there without the engine on it just it swells gas but what you're getting is sort of the lamborghini of trucks right you're getting something that is so grossly overpowered and over capable that you know only a few people are going to be able to afford to buy this thing it's way expensive i think they start at 79. actually no so 71.71 71 or 72 if you're around right uh but it's going to be hard to find one of those trucks right yeah a lot of them will have options um a lot of them will be around the higher 70s like you said about 79.80 uh the truck we tested was from ram at about 91 000. yeah you could also push it to a 100 grand so before we move on we have to say we have to you and i uh what's our favorite ram truck engine for the half tons do you want to go first or do you want me to go uh i'll go first the the five the regular 5.7 i mean as much as i love the trx it doesn't make any sense you know for day-to-day driving for a regular joe so i i like i actually really do like the pentastar i i've been very fond of that engine for years and years but that 5.7 liter hemi sounds good it works well they've been relatively reliable the 8-speed hookup with it works pretty damn good so all together if i were to get like a ram rebel with that 5.7 without the e-torque i'd be absolutely thrilled i have to agree with you i i mean as much as i love driving the trx it's effortless in every way right it's comfortable it's possible it's very sounds great i i personally i don't think i'll ever convince my wife to buy an 80 or 90 000 convince her what well you'll probably have to end up sleeping in my basement once you get the flipping in the trx and the trx right forever so because of that 5 7 hemi and i think without etorque even though the etorque system is now very affordable i think i would just skip it i just don't i don't really see it as that much of a benefit and because you can put mobile parts on that you know right make it loud make it cool i think 5.7 is where it's absolutely so let's move on to gm right and we're going to show you the silverado 1500 but this applies to this gmc as well yeah the sierra yeah the crg gmcr 1500 as well lots of engines to talk about this is five also five different power trains and they're very different and five engines but also they have a lot of transmission options this is where things get complicated and guys we've done several videos on this where we focus on each manufacturer so if you go to tfl now channel on youtube or even tfl truck channel on youtube you will see you and i have dug into the ford we've dug into the chevy engines we talked about ram choices very very detailed we just kind of overview this is an overview yeah this is sort of a way of generalizing and just taking everything and putting it together and trying to do it in less than an hour yes so now let's start with the silverado it has a base engine there's a 4.3 liter ecotec3 they they call it v6 it's a gas engine that's been around for quite some time right they haven't changed it much uh in the last several years i want to say like four or five years and the fourth three actually dates back decades oh yeah i mean in terms of display in different configurations right i mean there was even the chevy s10 had a 4.3 liter version of it and everything else so the thing is is that this is a different engine from that but i mean the displacement's the same and it is their base engine it's their entry-level engine with an entry-level transmission yes it's a six-speed automatic there no none of these offer a manual anymore none of them which is the ship but the six-speed automatic this is kind of a fleet truck once again it doesn't tow very much it's kind of like the ram v6 the base gas v6 engine it's not rated to tow very heavy but you can get it as a two-door basic truck wt they call it work truck with a longer eight foot bed and you can just use it as a fleet truck as a runabout as your work vehicle starts at about thirty thousand one ninety five they also have discounts like you said right uh many many different discounts but this is one of the more affordable options so far on the list i know the ram classic is another affordable option it is indeed you can get and once again if you don't tow a lot if you you know want to use it around town as a very simple truck i think that's probably for you but there are four other engine options on top of it right and the next one is really impressive only because it's so unique and that's because it's a turbocharged four-cylinder engine and so far general motors is the only truck company in the united states offering a half-ton truck that has a four-cylinder turbo as an option yeah this is a 2.7 like you said 310 horsepower and about 347 pound-feet of torque about 350. right which is really impressive but you know what's cool andre got a chance to go behind the scenes with this engine at the gm proving grounds tell them a little bit about that yeah i was actually fortunate enough to be at the uh the actual introduction of this engine they invited several journalists and i was one of them to the proving grounds in michigan and they gave us several silverado trucks that were parked in the parking lot right and they said we have something new but drive these around a little bit for a few minutes and we're not going to tell you what's new just just go feel them they didn't let you lift the hood or anything no opening the hood no looking under the truck right so just get in it drive it a few minutes and tell us what you think i got in it it was pretty quiet the engine you know started up it was relatively quiet i accelerated and i almost felt this turbocharged feeling you know like not too much wine there's not too much noise from the turbo um and i was like at that time you know the two-liter turbo was in every crossover that they built right right equinox et cetera et cetera i'm like did they just put a two liter in there and i i i got out of the truck and i talked to one of the engineers i was like it's it feels like it's turbocharged i know it's not a diesel and it may be a two liter they're like wow they're like no it's not but it's a 2.7 so it's a large displacement four cylinder right right on the upper end of the displacements yeah but it's very high tech dude it can run on two cylinders it can it has variable valve timing it's got this really fancy turbocharger that tries to eliminate lag it almost feels like a diesel it does but it doesn't fall off a cliff like a diesel so when you're accelerating off the line i've driven this thing up and down the ike gauntlet a few times without a trailer and and then i towed lightly with it uh i think i think it was like 4 000 or 5 000 pounds really good engine surprisingly good the thing about it that i really liked is that once again unlike a diesel where once you get up to about 3 500 4 000 rpm the power kind of fades out and everything else you're no longer really you know moving down the highway this thing will just keep on going it's like a freight train but it does have limited capacity yeah the towing is limited they're actually for 2021 just raise the towing just a smidge oh yeah so they they uh retested re recertified this truck actually it's pretty affordable um in the work truck configuration it's available as well 2.7 it's only a hundred and fifty five dollars extra over the other v6 i would definitely definitely get this so you gotta you gotta just decide um like do you want the kind of the older design v6 with a six speed or this engine with an eight speed right but this one tells a little bit more a lot more actually now yeah it's almost 9000 pounds or just over that so so if you want a little bit more capability maybe a little bit more efficiency just just a little bit more this could be an engine but eight speed has recently had a few marks kind of reliability marks against this yeah our producer and editor alex who is the motorcycle guy yeah he runs the tfl bike channel with case and paul he purchased a new eight-speed powered uh v8 silverado and he had very a lot of issues with the transmission it wasn't shifting smoothly yeah the transmission had some real issues so uh based on that we also heard some reports from other viewers with the same issue so right now i'm a little cautious about the eight speed but we heard very few things that are bad with the six or the ten speed right and we're going to get to the 10 speed in just a sec with the next engine option which is currently living inside of our long-term chevy silverado trail bus that's a 5.3 liter v8 5.3 liter v8 absolutely and we have it with a 10 speed we want we purchased that truck about a year ago because specifically for this reason we wanted to buy the most common engine that they built which is the 5.3 and then we wanted the new transmission and it's been bulletproof absolutely has now at the time i was yelling at roman i was so mad at him when he told me that we're getting this but we're not getting the 6.2 and it's like dude the 6.2 is so much more powerful it is a better towing engine it is sounds amazing we all love it at tfl it's one of our favorite engines like our top five gas engines really really good flexible engine but there are problems with it regardless of those problems i was like dude why did you do this and he said look most people who are out there in terms of volume will be buying the 5.3 and i want to see how it performs not just off-road with the trail boss but how it tows and how it hauls and you know what i have been thoroughly surprised the combination of that 5.3 with the 10-speed automatic transmission has been solid as hell it's one of the best towing trucks in its class i'm going to say that right here considering everything that we've towed with it it's done fantastic yeah and the trail bus is rated at about 9 500 pounds max stone right and we pushed it to the limit oh hell yeah we have and it's always just comes back and asks for more it absolutely just shrugs it off yeah the 5.3 is interesting in the silverado because it's available with three transmissions so you really have to watch very carefully if you're at the dealership make sure you understand this right yes because it's it it can be configured with a six speed in the lower trims eight speed and some of the mid trims and ten speeds so i would recommend going with a 10 it's more expensive but i think it offers you better performance and better efficiency acceleration efficiency and kind of everything across the board it is more expensive because it's available in the upper trim levels like starting with the lt rst um i'm sorry lt ltz and high country so um including the trail bosses right now there is a little caveat in terms of how great the trail boss is and a lot of the other uh general motors trucks is it's a sticking point if you're serious about off-roading if you're not it's no big deal but if you're serious about off-roading they do not offer in these trucks a electronic locking rear diff what they have is the g80 rear end which is a mechanically locking rear diff it doesn't matter it's automatic and it's mechanical and so there in our experience you get a lot of wheel spin before it actually kicks in and actually pushes you forward and we've done it with dozens and dozens of trucks so we have a lot of experience with it um in snow on the road everything else it's just fine but off-road if you're really serious about going off-road you may want to keep that in mind yeah totally and um so let's move on and then we will have we have to pick our favorite right oh amongst those yeah yeah so the next one is 62 v8 uh there for me it's a bit bit of love and hate right it's really powerful awesome engine 420 horsepower 460 pound-feet of torque it's not available in the work truck so if you want this engine you have to step up to uh at least uh well um in the silverado uh let's see it's available in the lt and also custom trail bus which is kind of a more affordable option to get it also the high country so uh several of these and you usually have to buy four wheel drive as well right so you have to and also the 10 speed i think right yeah the 10 speed is only made it right to the 6.2 so it's an awesome engine but so the flip side of that is it doesn't say it requires it but highly recommends premium fuel uh the owner's manual that i've read and checked several times said uh premium fuel is recommended 91 and 93 octane right but you can run slightly less octane but if you hear a knock or something else happens you have to immediately go back to premium that's a real shame yeah and we're talking about more common trucks we're not talking about you know you know very expensive vehicles yeah so that kind of makes me take a step back and i'm like really do i want do i would i really choose this engine what do you what do you think about the 6-2 the 6-2 is once again we we've driven with it it's it's a fast engine it's a powerful engine it sounds good it does a lot of things quite well but unfortunately he's absolutely right about the knocking we we i've encountered it the whole thing about that powertrain is that if you can afford that type of truck where you're going all the way up to the higher level and you want that better power you're going to pay for it at the pump at least and that's you know right now gas is really cheap but in the future it won't be so you have to take that into account with that being said in terms of the power gains that you're getting um if you're really in yeah which is huge um i mean it's was it 400 and 410 horsepower 420. 420 horsepower and you and i drag race them yeah the five three versus six two and it's like several truck lengths oh man i mean the six two is so powerful what was the torque on the six two four okay so we're talking about you know serious competitor for all of the high-powered engines that we're talking about today the thing is is that at the end of the day i just think that's a lot because you have to spend a lot of extra money in order to get one and then you're paying more on the gas so if you really don't need it maybe you should think about the 5.3 but we'll talk about that in a minute because we have one more engine to go yeah it's a three liter street six diesel it's the duramax engine and i'm probably gonna i'm gonna say it right now it's my favorite diesel and a half ton segment absolutely there's there's no doubt andre and i are 100 on the same page on this we have had wonderful experiences with this engine general motors this is a very different engine than the other two that it competes against both the ford and the one that's used by fca are v6s this is a straight six really good for torque it is super smooth it was specifically dedicated as a powertrain to be used in their half-ton vehicles and now they're using the same powertrain in the suburban as an option the tahoe the yukon and also the escalade right it's going to be available in the escalator yeah totally dude and actually we tomorrow or this weekend the december 12th i don't know when you're listening to this we actually have a tahoe diesel video coming out when we towed with it and we actually did the mpg testing on it it's very impressive i i so two stories about please go for it just just really briefly i remember being at mr truck's uh proving grounds here in colorado right uh his his uh property and i left the three liter straight sex diesel silverado running mm-hmm you know we were hooking up the trailer i left the engine running right i jumped out i you know him and i were moving something on the trailer i came up to the truck and i thought it was off because it was so quiet and i tried to start it again but it was running so this is how smooth and quiet this engine is yeah um power delivery very linear it accelerates well has great fuel efficiency really some of the best in class yeah real world this is what epa says this engine delivers you know 32 mpg sometimes maybe even 30 for a four wheel drive truck really great that white one we had i took home for one day oh andre only let me have it for one day because he was like mine then he was licking the door handle and everything else and i live the round trip for me to get denver to boulder where in boulder i live in denver uh is around 90 miles the way i go and so i went there drove around a lot tried to impress my wife with it didn't work um but the point is is that i drove it a lot and both combined city highway with a four-wheel drive truck fully loaded too i believe that thing that was pretty much loaded i was getting about 26 miles per gallon this is a full-size pickup truck dude this is a truck that how much can a tow that in that configuration that one was like uh ten thousand now they boosted it up it's near ten now it's near it was a bit lower but now they pushed it up i mean for a truck that can do that and getting combined 26 with my heavy right foot that was really impressive and it's a super smooth truck it is by far my favorite diesel in the class and now they made it a little cheaper too yeah so they used to be the same six two and the three liter diesel were the same price now they lowered it by about 400 uh 500 bucks which is significant so yeah so actually no i'm sorry scratch that 1500 bucks 1500 bucks they knocked off the price all right so so they're making more attractive in every way possible so now we have to decide dude we have five power plants the base v6 the four banger two v8s and the diesel quick question before you continue uh sorry to interrupt but uh from the v6 the base model v6 how much more is it to get first to five three than the six two and also the diesel what's the price differences there roughly it's very complex dude yeah with whatever you don't want to generalize yeah do you know why because that translation and you if you see me scrolling if you're watching this on youtube on tfl talk channel um not every engine is available in every trim right so when you step up to different trim you gain so you might not get it in the lt but you have to go up to the high whatever yeah so it's it's a similar price step as with the ram we discussed you know about two thousand bucks for v8 or maybe another you know 2000 bucks for the big v8 and the diesel uh it's just very impossible to say okay so the bottom line is for a couple grand more getting the diesel over the base v6 that makes sense but simply getting that 2.7 liter four-cylinder engine over the base v6 makes a ton of sense and it's not that expensive and i'm i'm definitely hovering around that territory so i kind of have a double choice uh but you go first yeah i'm torn um right now if i was buying like a gmc yukon something premium or a gmc sierra at4 something i love the a24 i think i would go with a 6-2 because i mean that premium territory i really love that brand right if i'm with the chevrolet i would go i'm torn between the three liter diesel and the five three with a 10 speed like in the drive and i don't i i'm sorry to say but the diesel i it's not i don't drive a lot of highway miles anymore personally so i would go with a 5 3 10 speed i'm really close with the 5 3 i really do like that 2.7 i really do but i just don't really see me using that honestly uh recently uh you know i drive back and forth to california a lot it's a thousand mile trip roughly 1100 miles um and it's really nice to do it in a vehicle that actually has really good range and the idea of only stopping once to fuel up going back and forth each way that's very attractive to me and the fact that i don't tow that much and the fact that i really do like having great range great mileage and a truck that is fairly clean that diesel is very compelling but at the end of the day it's the 5'3 for sure 5'3 with the 10 speed i cannot get it with the 8 speed after what happened to alex who nearly set his on fire because he was so upset with it but the 10 speed the combination we have in that trail boss is brilliant i agree and i didn't expect that initially me neither a lot of people said those engines are too small you know people were yelling at us left and right they overheat all that none of that is true and we really pushed it hard we took it off-road several times we beat it up with trailers we overloaded it we've done um a lot of camping with it too that that truck has been absolutely a star so very good truck with the 5'3 and the 10-speed and still offers you at least 10 000 pounds of towing maybe a little bit less or more depending on your config so hopefully that helps you because there's a lot of choice here there is a ton of choice but we're going to step up to something that even provides more choice and that's ford okay so 2021 f150 is redesigned right it's just i was looking online i saw one of our local dealers has won all of them have ordered dozens of them but none of them are showing up yet yeah but one of our dealers has one that's no so they're arriving they are arriving now to be fair obviously with covet and everything else making a brand new truck it's a very difficult proposition they had to do a lot of juggling in order just to get these out as soon as they could trust me they're working hard they want to sell them but unfortunately because of that everything has been strained and well it's taken a long time to get these to dealerships yeah totally they offer six power plants six right six yes but the good the good news is that one transmission yes the six speed that they offered in 2020 and before is gone now they removed the six speed so now they're basically doubling the tripling down on the 10-speed automatic which for the most part has proven pretty well i've never actually had a problem with it i know there's a couple of issues that people talk about on forums every combination of every power plant ever had issues is going to have some sort of issue in general i mean they build hundreds of thousands of these well not to mention the fact that on top of that if you look at other for basically every ford truck that exists has an option for 10-speed automatic transmission even the ranger and the bronco they're going to have a 10-speed expedition the expedition the super navigator version of it right right um super duty heavy-duty trucks obviously have beefier transmissions of course much larger but anyway yes this transmission may have issues there are some forums talk about issues but now 10 speed across the board so we don't have a choice if you're looking at the fourth the base engine is a 3.3 liter gas v6 so it's a very basic engine it kind of matches up but against the 3.6 liter ram right the v6 and it's sort of kind of against the 4.3 liter chevy yeah so it's kind of in that space because it's affordable right uh the base uh truck and i'm talking about xlf 150 two-door regular cab long bed is around 29 to 30 grand so this is a very affordable yeah it's the value leader yeah yeah and you know what's funny i was actually looking at the ordering guides for the f-150 for that price it's like you're getting like vinyl seats vinyl floor i mean almost no options i mean you still have kind of the new 8-inch display right in the in the truck but very basic features i think no even no cruise control if you're if you're at the bottom bottom bottom model so instead of airbags they actually have somebody you know behind the thing with a hand pump that'll pump up well i don't know if that's that far but no i the point is is that this is the stripped truck and not everybody does that not everybody offers an absolute base truck and the good news is for fleets this is an ideal vehicle yes if if you're a fleet manager buying lots of trucks and you want certain things you can definitely choose that absolutely so so that's fairly affordable to start right it kind of matches up against some of the other big three yeah but it's not the most powerful power plant out there no so next uh next up we have to uh in the in the price step uh is the 2.7 liter v6 ecoboost absolutely fantastic fantastic i love this engine yes it's a small displacement v6 twin turbocharged um i've driven dozens of these including when i go to five star tuning the guys out east in south carolina they tuned these engines to insane levels they are bananas those guys are awesome they they don't never stop no they'll never they they're they're hunting for power yeah so this engine already comes with 325 horsepower and 400 pound feet of torque from the factory it's twelve hundred dollars absolutely worth every single penny because you're getting so much more capability and it's a fairly efficient engine yeah and and gets really good efficiency too yeah epa wise uh i truthfully i never was able to get like some of the higher epa numbers in this engine because you're always in it right you're always accelerating it's fun it's a hot engine it's a it's a lightweight engine the truck is pretty fun it tows not too much i mean the maximum ratings depending on the rear differential ratio that you're about the configuration of the truck yeah it's probably up to about 9 000 pounds but still i mean that's okay for most people right if you're only towing let's say like 5000 on a regular basis this engine is absolutely perfect for you it is really responsive in in my estimation in traffic this is the best engine you can get other than perhaps the super high-end ones which are a lot more expensive next up is the five-liter coyote the five liter is still here yes um a lot of people said you know they might discontinue it yeah i was thinking maybe it's so yeah but for 2021 and they haven't talked about the future yet for 2021 model year this engine is still here it's been updated with a multi-displacement system which means it can shut off four with cylinders for a better mpg so this is kind of the first uh application of that for the coyote because ram has been doing it in the five seven past for forever now ford is doing it and they gained one mpg uh so that's that's a decent improvement it is especially over the long run and the thing about the coyote is that this is a powertrain we all love it sounds amazing it's really good for pooling it is a very flexible engine a lot of you guys out there are very much against turbocharging which i can understand ford has put a lot of money behind their turbocharged engines but for those of you who are just not 100 on board with turbo charging this is your choice and it is a really good choice not only that but it's actually a very similar engine that they use in the ford mustang yeah absolutely uh 400 horsepower now so they bumped the power just a little bit now it's around 400 and 410 pound feet of torque it's a very stout engine and the 10 speed uses uh that power quite well it does it's matched to 10 speed it's 2000 bucks when you consider the base v6 right so 2000 over the v6 another really good expenditure for those of you who want some real power uh so and it can tow around um what was a 9000 i think is its comfort zone yeah and it can be rated higher a little bit higher once again it depends on whether or not you know four wheel drive all the configurations that you can get it does matter in terms of overall performance yeah once again we're not going deep now here is mostly an overview but this engine is great for pulling it's actually as efficient under load as some of the ecoboost engines that ford offers right so you know when ford says ecoboost is really really efficient they mean if you're not using it hard if you're pushing that v6 turbo uh it's really thirsty as well but they are crazy powerful and we'll get to that in just one moment one final thing about the coyote andre is that it is not available it used to be available in other vehicles but they've sort of pared it down whether or not ford is going to get rid of this engine down the line is debatable it's unusual that it's still here because they've been moving towards ecoboost so i would say that if you guys are really into the idea of getting a ford v8 you might want to hurry up because it may disappear i mean we could be wrong ford has not said anything about its future or so v8 engines and pickup trucks go together like peanut butter yeah they do but so there may be another v8 they're hiding that they're not telling us about you yeah but we've heard some rumors i don't know a lot of people are saying seven three gods very heavy engine man it could happen it could happen it would be a real it'd be interesting to see how it works but the bottom line is we can only assume so much but what we do know for a fact is ford is putting a lot of time and energy and money behind their ecoboost engines so talk about ecoboost talking about ecoboost next engine in line for the price is a three five so the bigger ecoboost v6 which is their workhorse and it's been around initial generation of this engine came out 10 years ago uh yeah it seems like time is flying by but anyway it's been a long time since this engine was actually first introduced in a previous generation uh 2 2600 bucks for this from the base base engine up to this engine so these price increments are pretty small right yeah i'd say fairly reasonable so for 1200 bucks you get a small ecoboost uh then for another 700 bucks you get a v8 then another 600 bucks you get the bigger v6 so these are not very big increments in price right uh but if you want maximum towing this is the choice this is the engine it is a beast they boosted the power and torque on this one again 400 horsepower now yeah 500 pound feet of torque 500 damn this engine basically it's more than 62 yeah uh as far as torque is concerned yeah it also forms any v8 i think other than the massive trx v8 yeah yeah it's crazy numbers so crazy numbers and we have the proof by the way behind that with the older ecoboosts because they absolutely ate up the eye gauntlet they were some of the fastest power trains we had they had very little strain pulling trailers they were really impressive uh so at least two engines left right yeah that's right because there is another 3.5 that not a lot of people talk about but it is one that you can get well that you do get with the ford raptor and i believe the f-150 limited but this is the 2020 models right right we don't know for sure whether or not this is going to be continued in the next patch right so the high output the h0 uh ecoboost uh they're kind of discontinuing it because they're stopping production of the current raptor right and the current f-150 limited which had this engine at 450 horsepower it's been the most powerful engine in the half dot section that is correct so we don't know what's happening in the next raptor yet right ford hasn't said but we should find out pretty soon because uh numbers are going to be coming out eventually but the point here is that for the 2020 model you can still get this powertrain yeah and it is the most watts right yeah and uh it is the most powerful uh uh 3.5 liter v6 that you can get but there is another engine that ford is producing yes now if you want really premium technology uh and it costs money oh yeah um they have the new hybrid it's a full hybrid in the sense that you'll actually move your vehicle a certain distance it's not under electric power under electric power only um it's not gonna it's not a plug-in hybrid it's a it's it has a small battery 1.5 kilowatt hour battery but crazy power output and you drag raced recently against the raptor yes which you can see on tfl truck it was a great drag race that thing is remarkably fast this engine compared to the base v6 uh 33 costs 4 500 bucks so this is now a significant step but you're getting listen to this so in a four wheel drive model you're getting 24 mpg combined because you're also able to get 24 mpg in the city right two-wheel drive version has just been rated this morning um it's rated at 25 mpg in the city and 25 combined so this is according to the epa now we haven't verified all these numbers yet no we haven't but 25 is the highest full-size economy you can currently get out of a gas engine yes it is expensive though yeah 430 horsepower which is a lot of power 570 pound-feet of torque this is more than some heavy-duty diesels from like 10 years ago right uh or five years ago now there are a couple things uh first of all they are using the 3.5 ecoboost but it's it's been modified so it can work in two different ways it can give you you know performance obviously but it can also work kind of like a generator and that's the other thing about this truck this truck has a couple party tricks and andre is in love with it he's having a hard time right now deciding whether or not he should try to find a way to buy one and i know it i cause i can see his stress little temple starts flexing when he looks at one so here's the thing about this truck you can get well over 700 miles range which is incredible for a gas truck you can bring it to a work site or campsite and run a lot of power out of it for over 30 hours if you have a full tank and that's on maximum draw so andre what is it about this thing that makes it into an amazing generator well it's using this battery as a buffer right right so you have 1.5 kilowatt hours of capacity kind of like think about like how water flows right you have a little like buffer pool and then it's when you're using power you're drawing a lot of energy and we have a video where david our friend david actually weld it based on this you know output from electric cars we charge electric cars we power two rvs two rv trailers yeah big ones too um and and then the engine kicks on when it senses that the energy from the battery from this and it and it and it recharges us back up as you're sitting and it does it automatically you don't have to do anything you just have to push start button it will be either idling and usually with our experience it's only at about a thousand rpm yeah so if you think it's gonna be like revving at four grand or five grand sitting there no it just kind of mildly idles and charges the battery and actually gets the power out so it's really kind of cool and it's somewhat seamless the if you look at the back of the vehicle you're going to see a whole bunch of outlets you can power a lot of stuff basically you can run an entire worksite off of this damn thing it's a really impressive setup yeah and we'll continue playing with this hopefully uh so um so this engine is expensive like i said it's available throughout the range there's final choice they have a three liter v6 diesel they call it the power stroke it's it continues unchanged mostly from the previous generation truck from the 2020 and before it's the most expensive option i have it's about five grand which doesn't make a lot of sense yeah and it's not so the power of it is a little bit less than in the others from gm and ram right right as far as torque and power and then it toes okay so why would you get this engine i think once again if you're looking for highway miles you're driving like 40 50 000 miles a year if you want something that gets great highway efficiency maybe this is a choice for you but why would you get this over the hybrid which is less expensive right so so now we have to decide out of all this fourth choice for engines for f-150 which one is our favorite i love the 2.7 that 2.7 is i mean i the new hybrid has blown me away but in terms of what the type of driving i do the type of daily thing that 2.7 liter engine is everything i need it is so spunky off the line it tows great for for you know 5 000 pounds 6 000 pounds no problem and it just financially makes a lot of sense yeah for me actually i'm torn between the coyote and the hybrid come on hybrid you know it you you were lusting after that thing and and you he was looking mopey in the office when he had to walk away from that truck yeah yeah he so loves it come on i love the idea of it because um it's so first of all it's efficient right it can provide power i love the v8 sound i'm kind of torn but i think i would choose the hybrid uh we don't know anything about it as far as reliability durability etc makes a lot of funny noises i can say it does it makes a ton of noises but you know there's a lot of the technology is just mind-boggling that goes behind this engine so i would go hybrid for this new generation function i knew it now one final thing i want to ask you about ford um with the diesel we've towed with it before what did we tell it was like seven thousand pounds we towed yeah and we did the mpg loop we did i gauntlet it did okay if i recall yeah for towing the diesel is really good yeah yeah yeah yeah it was a decent thing it's just that once again we're just having a hard time getting our heads around the fact that the hybrid is so much more efficient and less expensive it just makes a lot more sense so out of all of these so um i think you know we kind of narrowed in on the hemi 5.7 the 5.3 gm engine um you kind of picked the 2-7 ecoboost or tundra and titan do you have a favorite out of those top five um if you picked if i could make my perfect truck um without being silly well you know like obviously i'd want to put the trx engine and you know anything anything yeah wouldn't it be great to put one of those like a toyota tacoma or tundra there is one that's a comment i would put in a small trick that would be awesome now uh in all honesty i try to look at the whole picture now bear in mind that not everybody wants to do what i want to do so i don't tow a lot i have a little tent trailer it's like 1400 pounds when it's fully loaded but i do a lot of hauling so i like to have some you know pretty good capacity and that's the interesting thing is that some of these trucks with the smaller engines actually haul a little bit more when you look at the configuration so when it's all said and done i'm torn between the 5.3 from chevrolet and the 2.7 from ford those are fantastic engines but my favorite engine still is the 5.6 liter v8 from nissan i think it's such a flexible great engine i just wish i just wish that nissan would make their trucks a little bit more affordable on the bottom end actually throughout their entire thing to make them a little bit more competitive but yeah i those three are my choices and then out of those three um i i mean i do like the five point seven as well uh see you're making me choose no no it's tough uh it wasn't fair i put you on the spot it's a very tough choice uh but i think you guys are seeing what we're talking about right right i mean it depends on your need also right if you don't have a lot of towing need maybe a more basic engine is good for you right right and consider this that you're gonna be saving a lot of dough not just you know buying the vehicle but also at the pump if you're getting you know the smaller displacement engines in most cases are pretty efficient by comparison to the much larger ones based on the real world testing that we've done at tfl truck i'm torn between the 5 3 10 speed and this hybrid the f-150 the new one after all the testing we've done uh i don't know enough about the hybrid yet you know we haven't lived with it for extended period of time but that's where i am even it's hard choice i i i know what you're saying but those are my top two yeah you know at the end of the day as much as the engines all are awesome and they are everything we've mentioned today all of them are pretty solid choices it's just a question of how you configure the vehicle it really comes down to what you really need to do with the vehicle on a day-to-day basis and for us we're sort of thinking about that and i know that andre in the near future will probably end up buying a hybrid because he loves it so dearly i don't want to live with it yeah i know but you and you love the tech and everything else and the numbers and he loves numbers he loves numbers so much numbers me yeah that's the thing you know what even though i love the the 2.7 and uh the diesel out of this chevrolet and all that yeah i think i want a v8 i still want to hear the v8 grown yeah but it but and that that's where the 5.7 comes in because that is a really good sound i can't make a choice you know it really depends at the end of the day or what the prices are because i'm cheap so that's the other part so guys thank you so much for joining us we hope this at the very least helps you kind of steer in a particular direction a lot of you guys really don't need the super powerful engines and some of you guys might want to look a little bit more beefy than the base engine yeah totally and of course go back to tfotruck.com we also have tflofrow.com for more off-road worthy stuff and nathan has several really great stories the car is coming up right the car is coming up by the time you guys see this recording it's only going to be about a week or so before dakar hits the dakar rally is the toughest off-road race ever and there are a lot of entrants including let me quickly say this a classics class vehicles that were built before 2000 going all the way back 30 years and more they're competing as well in a special class i highly recommend you go to tfloffroad.com we have a whole bunch of information out there with every single class that's out there and you'll be able to find out more information thank you guys as always see you next time

Channel: TFLtalk

Views: 616,755

Keywords: tfl, tfltruck, tflcar, podcast, truck, best truck engine, best truck engines, best truck engines ever, best semi truck engines, engine, the 10 best truck engines ever, best truck engines of all time, 10 best truck engines of all time, truck engine, truck engines, best, best trucks, best truck engine sound, best engines, the fast lane truck, trucks, diesel trucks, truck review, top truck engines, best engine, truck engine reviews, best v8 engine

Id: A35psWm7GNA

Length: 67min 34sec (4054 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 19 2020