Budget Beater Build: 2004 Dakota

Midnightmoon said:

Pulling this thread back up to answer this question. We've put approx 1500 miles on it since I got it back on the road. It's averaging 14 mpg. Not great, but not bad for an occasional use vehicle.

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Grit dog said:

That’s 1mpg better than the Dooragno I just picked up. 318/3.55 truck. Same miles as yours too. Think I could get 14-15mpg out of it if I kept the highway speeds down. It also has aggressive 31-10.50s on it but the size matches the speedo and gps within 1mph at highway speeds.
A 30 mile run on a flat stretch of highway at 60-80mph not much traffic said 17mpg on the lie o meter.
I secretly hoped it would do better than say the ole Tahoe. But 13-14mpg is aboot it for any half ton ish 4x4 older V8 rig regardless of whether it’s a pickup or suv. Even if it’s only 3/4 scale!
Great little rig though. Runs like a Swiss watch. Needs a full fluid maintenance and some typical 100m mile stuff like shocks and brake shoes but old small block Dodge engines are pretty close to small block GMs for being bulletproof! And it definitely out kicks its coverage for the price.

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