[carolina guy]

Originally Posted by Tulok

Hello all,

I've been thinking a lot for the past while since I've had my suburban on how to Eco-mod it. I bought it to use off-road, but I really want to take it to places that are hundreds of miles away without breaking the bank. Ha!

It seems to get pretty good MPG in town and on the shorter trips I take, but I haven't done any mpg tests with it unloaded. I think it does get at least 13 in town, and off-road mixed in.

It has a 40-Gallon tank and I am imagining how amazing it would be to get 20 mpg (straight pure freeway) and to be able to travel so far on a tank.

I often drive between Idaho, Utah, Nevada and California on the I-15 which is mostly flat with some mountains but it's overall net isn't much.

I know the mirrors are just humongous, I can fab up some much smaller ones. and the grill opening is huge. I have trouble keeping it up to temp, so maybe a grill block would help?

Also, there is a Huge mechanical fan that I'll be changing to electric with a thermostat.

I'm to the point where I have to make some changes to the vehicle to get it to go where I want off-road.

One thing, is that I need larger tires 35" and a lift to clear them, and probably a larger heavier rear axle. I know that will murder my MPG. But I was thinking of a way to use a winch strung under the vehicle with some snatch blocks to lower the vehicle for long drives. Do you think that lowering a truck would help mpg on the freeway?


Another option is just converting to a much lighter single cab truck body. Which is very easy and cheap, I have a ton of parts available for that. But I don't have a truck bed, so I would make a flat bed, But that's probably worse aero than a Burban unless I made the roll cage sort of kamm-back shaped and had a vinyl top made for the back. This is doable but I'm not sure if it's worth the work compared to a suburban body in the end.

The last option, and this might be the way I go either way, is to convert to a postal jeep. The oldest really small ones.I can swap everything over to one and be at about 3000 lbs roughly. Much better than 5000 I'm at. I could also keep the smaller 31" tires. I could still put smaller mirrors, and grill block, and do the lowering trick on the tiny jeep.

Do you think venting the fenders on a jeep would help?

I know that's long, but in short:

Much smaller, though slightly worse CD and smaller tires. Or larger and heavier but with better CD, though with bigger heavier tires

20mpg is the goal

If you want to raise it and lower it, have you thought about airbag suspension?