Okay. Personalexperience with diesel Excursion.
2002 Model Year. 7.3L Powerstroke Turbo-Diesel V-8. (The new 6.0L V-8's are bad engines IMHO)
4R100 Automatic Transmission. 4Speed OverDrive.
4x4 Transaxle
Limited Ultra Package. Very comfortable, with seat warmers, premium stereo, etc.
Towing capacity 12500lbs with a Tongue of 1250lb.
Modifications: 4 inch STRAIGHT exhaust (no Cat and no Muffler) K&N Filter in stock air box. "10k" Resistor mod (modifies resistance to the fuel injectors making them think they need to push higher pressures. Stock Pres=16K PSI give or take versus modded Pres=22k PSI give or take). Superchips Power Programmer "Hi-Perf" Mode (DO NOT USE WHILE TOWING)
Analysis:
Vehicle in tow= 1998 Reinell 26' Ski-Boat and dual-axle trailer, loaded with a weeks worth of food and supplies for a trip to Lake Powell. Weight= Aprox. 7500lbs.
Road travelled= Interstate 70 through Colorado. Over Eisenhauer Tunnel pass. Road is something like 6% incline. Its hairy (there are maybe 8 Runaway Truck ramps on the way down)
While towing up the hill, able to maintain 60mph without any problem on the Westbound side, while the 454CI Gas Suburban we used to have would bog to about 25mph with same boat, same load, on the same road.
Through Utah, with ambient temps of about 112+ Fahrenheit, absolutely no overheating concerns with A/C blasting in the front and in the back and still cooking at 65-75MPH. The 454 Suburban would crawl at 50MPH with the heater blasting (so we wouldn't melt the engine) and the windows rolled down with my family sweating our buts off.
On the way back, with the boat weighing aprox. 6000 lb, we went 60mph on the hill up, till a check-engine light came on (turned out to be water in the fuel due to bad diesel)
Braking analysis:
Engine braking power is damn near non-existant. The 454 was a champ at keeping us slowed down with the engine (though the brakes were still involved... will detail in a sec)
Suggestion for that is to purchase either a USGear Super Duty Exhaust Brake or a Bank's Brake exhaust brake, either with associated Torque Converter locker. They both are very effective systems. Because of the negligible exhaust braking properties, we rode the brakes the whole way down either side. It never got to the point of no control, just annoyance.
Brakes:
The brakes are still the original equipment. We have made the Powell trip once, and are leaving again in 4 days for it. We have 62,000 miles on it. The brakes are still fine, but will need to be done within the next 10,000 miles.
The Suburban 2500 with 454 Big Block V-8 and the Super Duty towing package........ Well, we had to do brakes every 5000 miles in it, as we tow either the boat, our 9000lb camper, or our flatbed (1500lbs, but is usually loaded with 500lb+ of cargo) roughly once or twice every week.
Transmission:
The 4 speed with OverDrive is very nice, especially for highway driving, but the Ford transmissions DO NOT deal with additional power over stock very well. Stock life is expected to be 120,000 miles. With 100hp over stock, life is expected to be 45,000-90,000 miles depending on driving style. Suggested solution- A transmission from Brians Truck Shop. Same setup, just much better approached from a strength standpoint. Our 550hp F-250 has 50,000 miles on it and it has no sign of quitting.
The tranny is the original in the Excursion.
Towing recommendations- Buy a larger Transmission Cooler and do not Tow with a chip, power programmer, Nitrous, or Propane kit installed or running. That stock tranny doesn't like that. With the stock setup, it will do you a great job for a long time. With stock power and a bigger tranny cooler, expect a 15-50% increase in tranny life. Recommend the Tru-Cool Max from
www.thedieselsitetoo.com .
The Tranny in the 2500 Suburban stood up to 75,000 miles of towing and abuse before it croaked.
Comfort:
Towing:
Very stable ride. With a Distribution Hitch, even side wind is very tolerable. Without, depending on the height and length of your trailer it can be a pain, but that is how it is with anything. The suspension deals with jolts and bumps beautifully when loaded down a bit. Its still truck-ish, but its not like riding a hard-tailed motorcycle in any regard. The seats are well designed, there is leg room in every row. I'm 6'2" and even the third row is comfortable.
The Limited and Eddie Bauer versions have heated seats. Very nice.
Suburban: Kind of harsh over bumps and jolts. With a distribution hitch, wind was again no problem. Seats are fairly well designed. I think heated seats are available, but we didn't have them. I could not tolerate the third row for any length of time over 10 minutes.
Not Towing:
Excursion: Truck-like, but not like an F-350. Handles corners very nicely.
Suburban: Very nice un-loaded ride. I miss that part of our Suburban. It was more car-like than truck-like. Unfortunatly the towing ride was harsher due to this.
Mileage: Okay... This may sound amazing for a 7400lb SUV, but we get 17-22 mpg. We have a 12 mile drive into town, and we make two 60 mile each-way trips on the highway each week. The worst mileage I've ever seen was towing the boat over Eisenhauer Tunnel. 11 mpg.
Suburban 454 got 8-12mpg not towing and we saw 4.5 mpg going over Eisenhauer Tunnel.
What big issues have we had? We had an alternator go out at 10,000 miles. No alternator problems since. We had an oil seal on the 10,000PSI oil line blow out. We lost 1 quart of oil per minute of running. Got that fixed, no problem since. We had both batteries die due to the bad alternator and having run it for 4 days on a dead alternator. No problem since. The tires that the SUV came with were recalled due to high-speed blowouts and replaced for free in favor of beefier ones. Is that really a problem? Well, the fact that the tires we got for free are crap is. You get what you pay for.
I think that the Excursion is a nice daily driver, if you don't mind a rougher ride than the Touareg would offer.
The Powerstroke Diesel engine may only be a V-8, but put an open exhaust and intake on it, and just you watch it pull your house off its foundation.
Don't think a 7400lb vehicle can go fast? You are sooo very wrong.
http://www.putfile.com/media.php?n=F350Run is a video of a 11.4 second F-350 CREW CAB (7600lb or so) smoking the CRAP out of an RX-7. Richard Maddson AKA MADDOG is the pilot.
http://host226.ipowerweb.com/~colorado/html/modules/gallery/albums/album13/abt.avi
Alan Black in his truck, "White Lightning" making a 13.8 sec run.