Ford F150 Ecoboost

Serious trucks need a V-8 engine, right? I mean, there’s nothing that quite matches eight
snarling, gas-gulping cylinders of power for hauling large trailers and big cargo loads, right?

Wrong. 

Sure, time was that the kind of torque needed to move large objects was only available powered by eight cylinders or by diesel. Yes, you could get big horsepower out of small engines, but at ridiculously high revs and with puny amounts of torque. And it’s torque that gets stationary objects moving, not horsepower, which is what keeps moving objects moving farther. 

It’s become almost dogma, to the point that even today, hard-core trucksters will likely still look down their nose at the Ford F-150 EcoBoost V-6 engine and sniff derisively. 

Until they drive one. 

The 3.5-litre EcoBoost V-6 is the smallest engine in the F-150 lineup. But it’s making the biggest splash, thanks to towing, torque and low-end grunt that rivals its 6.2-litre V-8 brother. Michael Lord, Ford’s regional product trainer who presented the F-150 to Winnipeg media recently, said that at 1,700 rpm—where the real work happens—the EcoBoost has MORE torque than the 6.2. 

The EcoBoost V-6 and the 6.2-litre V-8 both can tow up to 11,300 pounds. The payload capacity of the EcoBoost is almost twice that of the 6.2. And the EcoBoost’s fuel economy is off by only one-tenth of a litre per 100 kilometers from the base-model 3.7-litre V-6 (EcoBoost 12.9 l/100 km city, 9 l/100km highway; 3.7-litre 12.8 l/100 km city, 8.9 l/100 km highway.) 

The EcoBoost accomplishes this through turbocharging. Two small turbos compress the air entering the engine to 12 psi, producing 365 horsepower and 420 pound-feet of torque. That won’t mean anything to you unless you’re a gearhead, so put it this way: those numbers used to be the sole domain of diesel trucks.

There was a time when those numbers weren’t available with V-8 engines. 

This kind of towing capacity at one time forced buyers into Super Duty trucks. Ford is now expecting that these kinds of towing and cargo capacities will coax those drivers who once needed SuperDuty (F-250, F-350) trucks to step back into the F-150. 

Ford demonstrated the F-150 at an event at Red River Exhibition Park recently and put its EcoBoost engines up against a 5.7-litre HEMI V-8 Dodge Ram and a 5.8-litre V-8 Chevrolet Silverado. While each vehicle had its strong points, the EcoBoost with its six-speed automatic transmission and standard features such as trailer sway control excelled. The Ram, with a five-speed, will clearly benefit from a coming eight-speed automatic now under development in Germany. 

Ford’s new six-speed also features a manual shift feature and Range Select, which allows the driver to lock out the higher gears when needed, as when towing through mountains. The transmission will also take downshift commands during hill descent through a tap on the brakes to force a downshift and increase engine braking. While it’s generally true that brake pads are cheaper to replace than powertrain components (an often-heard, and often true, argument against engine braking in normal driving), when towing heavy trailers downhill, the last thing you want is to have had to use your brakes so much that they’re too hot to stop when you really need them. 

The six-speed also allows the engine to coast at about 1,500 rpm at highway speeds, making for a very quiet ride. 

The other engines in the F-150 lineup include the thrifty and surprisingly quick on the dragstrip 3.7-litre V-6 base engine, a 5.0-litre V-8 that sounds just as sweet in the F-150 as it does in the Mustang and the 6.2-litre V-8. 

Lord, the Ford trainer, said questions about the EcoBoost engine’s durability were answered in a grueling series of torture tests on one engine pulled at random and installed in an F-150 and later in an F-150 Raptor. After completing a series of tests, the same engine, without rebuilding or refurbishing of any kind, completed the Baja 1000,
a tortuous 1,000-mile off-road rally. Videos of the tests can be found through the QR code in
this story or on YouTube (search for F-150 EcoBoost torture test). 

Carmakers often—and often without cause—use the term game-changer.
If ever there really was a game-changer, it’s the EcoBoost V-6 in a pickup truck.