Better MPG by by cutting a bit of power...

I did some experimenting with HHO about 10 years back and with it you can double the fuel economy, remove emissions and have more power. I was getting 30 mpg out of a 2003 2500 quadrasteer suburban. Heavier than the TRX. The hiccup is the ECU is trained to see raw gas dumped out the exhaust and you need to fool it. There are numerous things you can attach to do it but its not a plug and play scenario.
Interesting ‼️
 
Aero drag is a big one. Having those 35" tires sticking out in the on coming air is an enormous amount of drag. Add the ride height causing a ton of air under the truck. Another factor is the amount of power it takes to turn the supercharger just cruising uses a decent amount of fuel on its own. Plus the engine already being a 6.2L. There are a lot of reasons the aero on this thing is horrific.

After owning mine for (an entire) 450 miles now there has been one other very obvious thing I see that is sucking fuel for seemingly no reason. The air/fuel ratio is always around 13.5 while driving normally. Even under the lightest load it is still targeting 13.5. I have tuned many of my personal cars to run in the upper 15's lower 16 AFR while cruising and never caused a single issue. This creates more NOx emissions, not going to damage anything except the EPA's ego. I would imagine there has to be some head room there to go a bit more lean without causing any knock. That on its own, should gain a couple MPG I would think. 13.5 is normally a safe range for something with a fair amount of load on the engine. Shouldn't be that bad while under light loads of cruising around town or even at lower highway speeds. (IMO) So this might be an avenue for someone's tuner to chase results.
This is the comment I was waiting to see, I also believe this to be true, (having several custom tuned vehicles myself) it can be stated that not many factory vehicles come tuned optimally performance/efficiency from the manufacture, you can take almost any bone stock vehicle, put it on a dyno, stick a O2 probe in it and fine tune it for both performance and efficiency, the results will be very noticeable in both areas, if you are looking to gain power or MPG a custom tune is the right direction.
 
There should just be a HP/Torque rotary dial, much like radio volume. If you turn it all the down, you'll get 200hp/200 torque and 30 mpg highway, and all the way up you'll get full torque/hp with 702 hp/650 torque.

If that was an add on feature, how much would it be worth?
 
There should just be a HP/Torque rotary dial, much like radio volume. If you turn it all the down, you'll get 200hp/200 torque and 30 mpg highway, and all the way up you'll get full torque/hp with 702 hp/650 torque.

If that was an add on feature, how much would it be worth?
That’s assuming that 200hp would get any better gas mileage. Remember, that super charger takes quite a bit of HP to turn, even if it’s keeping out of the boost!
 
Ok. Before any of you owners go and grab the torches and start making the standard replies about it being a Hellcat and it being a TRX. I GET THAT!!!!!

I have put over 20,000 miles on my TRX and I'm so freaking happy with everything about it EXCEPT THE MPG....

It is super comfortable. It has a super wide stance. It has a wonderful interior. It continually gets compliments on its looks everyone that sees it. And let's never forget that it has an engine sound that makes children out of all of us.

But as EVERYONE knows it gets the sh1tt1est MPG of anything on the road. And I completely understand that it needs that much fuel to make it run like it does.... I am not arguing at all about that ...

What I am starting to wonder about (and I think others have wondered) is there a way to take a bit of power AWAY from the beast and gain 5 to 6 or even more MPG. I think the owners that have to travel alot like I do would be the main people that would be interested in something like this.

Let just look at it like this..... What if we could change the injectors to a slightly smaller size and drop the boost down to about 1/2 what it is now. Then when the tuner is developing a safe tune for those adjustments have them allow for 87 octane fuel. Even after neutering it that much It would still probably have over 450hp. I would be willing to let a tuner modify mine first if they think they can accomplish even a little better mileage.

I just don't want to keep putting 300.00 to 400.00 or even more into my tank each week. But I don't want to get rid of my TRX. Like I said, it is wonderful in every way except the mileage.

Now , please don't be mean when you reply. I I hope there are other owners that want to hang onto their TRX for a while and could benefit from a few more MPG.

What does everyone think about my idea?
I bought a v6 used durango.

Yes it was 40k, but the TRX is not a commuter and I'll put on 20k plus a year. So for my 4-hour drives from Denver to the Grand Junction twice a month I'll take the Durango that gets 21-22mpg, runs regular unleaded, load the miles up on it, rock chips from I70, etc. The TRX is a special vehicle and very expensive miles. I put 16k on my first pretty quickly, and it's probably like 30-40 an hour to drive if you factor in gas, wear and tear, etc. Normal vehicle IRS rates for vehicle mileage expensing was .55 per mile last I checked.

So I am going to use my TRX for around town, desert fun, hauling toys, etc., and put the rest of the miles on the Durango. Yes, it is less fun, not as comfortable, but I don't feel bad putting the miles on it, and the gas mileage difference (with regular unleaded) is a huge plus. If I didn't regularly commute I would not have purchased the Durango.
 

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