I'm buying my wife a new Suburban with a 5.3 in it and Im looking for some mods that will give it some more power and MORE MPG.
This is what I have been thinking= I remember reading that the corvette guys were saying that they picked up like 2 MPG when the installed there AFR heads. So that got me thinking the same thing. If I did the heads with all the basics like CAI and cat back and a tune, Do you think i would pick up MPG with the heads? I know the top end power will pickup but Im more interested in the mid range and MPG.

thanks
John

 

So you are willing to spend $3,000+ to pick up like 2 mpg?

Have you sat down and done the math? Even IF you picked up 2 mpg with those parts, do you know how long it would take before you saved that much $ in gas?

 

The 205's will drop compression on a 5.3l too!

 

If this is for your wife, then I am not sure why you want to spend all that extra money to make it run faster. Does she care? I would think that you would want something reliable and safe for her, so she doesn't have any issues. YOu start changing heads, and who knows what might happen. Cold air intakes and stuff like that are easy to do, but they are going to make it beller when you give it gas. If she likes that kind of stuff, then go for it. I think I would save my money and do the mods on my vehicle and let her drive a bone stock rig.

 

HP tuners I cant say it enough, it fixs every problem. Removing T/M on my HD gave me close to 7 MPG better traffic driving. And a whole lot more *****, well not more, but lets you use all of what you got.

 

I have my own cars to mod (many of them) Our son races motoX and we are going to use the suburban to pull a trailer so thats why im looking for the power and MPG. I dont know why you would think that changing the heads to a good quality head like the AFR is going to reduce engine life or drivabilty.
Im just looking for ways to increse the MPG and the power.

Oh ya and my wife is used to driving fast or modded cars her last few were a 11 second 01 WS6 and an 11 second Grand National. Both cars were dead reliable and got decent mileage and never broke down.

 

The AFR's and all the other heads I've looked at have larger combustion chambers which would lower hp/tq.
Have you considered a supercharger? You dont have to get insane with it, 5lbs of boost would give you what you want!

 

Yes that was my other option that I was thinking about. I was looking into the Whipple blower because of the off idle power that they make.
Why cant GM just put a duramax in a suburban???????????/

 

It's been done before.