Well I made the mistake of putting a Wide band o2 gauge on my 392 Challenger, at WOT its in the 11.6 afr range, now that I know this its driving me NUTS LOL, car runs great for being all stock 11.79@ 114.5 with drag radials, time for getting the stuff to do a tune on it GRRRR , looks like HP tuners is the best option.

You may already be aware of this, but in case you're not:
- your car is new enough that you'll also need the OBD bypass link
- your ECM is locked from the factory; will need to send it someplace that can unlock it for you, or purchase a "blank" replacement outright

I've looked into "a tune" for my 1320, but haven't taken any steps in that direction since it's still under warranty thru EOY. Seems like there's a mix of people using the HP Tuners and DiabloSport hand-held tuners, plus something of an aftermarket for people who do custom "by mail" tunes.

Going to talk to Sound German, he is working on putting the Hellcat ecm,in the 392 ,,uses wide band O2's instead of the narrow ones we have in a 392, that way it will have ecm fuel control at all throttle ranges.

Another option is Geoff Turk - he has his Blackbird Performance up and running https://blackbird-performance.com/ - he has done some pretty impressive things in the tuning realm so far!

Get a hold of big 3 racing big rick has a new computor for the 2015 and up cars

I tuned my 2016 challenger scat pack when I had it.


To be honest it was a LOT of money to spend for ~20hp and bypass the 100s of hours of work put into the stock tune to keep it safe under all conditions by Chrysler engineering.


It's at that AF for a reason. Running it fat allows them to squeak in some more timing at 10.9:1 comp

My brother has a 1320. He purchased a new OEM PCM . They put bigger injectors, E85 tune, light wheels and tires, smaller crank pulley. Made a huge difference. It's been 11.00 @ 125 in the 1/4 in really good air. I think it weighs over 4300 lbs with him in it.

I agree mostly with you , except the 392 has narrow band sensors, the HC has wide band, so do other performance newer cars, example of no wot fuel control is , yesterday it was 12.3 afr, the day before with different weather conditions it was 11.6 & thats not very fail safe , the car runs & drives awesome but this is a racing forum

I see a lot of names thrown around these days for "tuners"... HemiFever, Jay Greene, and lots of different shops offer their "talents". I don't know who really knows W T H they're doing... With these guys, I don't know how much is science and how much is "What happens if I push THIS button?"

I've been told a good "tune" for a Scat Pack is worth what was mentioned above, about 20 HP. And, no, it's not cheap when you need to drop the $ for a hand-held device, etc. Getting one w/ a safe "canned" tune that may be better than OEM but still leave power on the table is about $600 last I looked (e.g. DiabloSport). Add to that either the time and $ to have the original PCM unlocked or the cost to purchase an unlocked PCM outright and it's gonna hit $1K +/- ... ouch.

For me, I was looking for a couple of tenths so I could be pretty confident the car would run 11.99 or better under typical conditions. One of the local street car series has a 12.0 break between classes, which means you can flip a coin on whether I'm slower or faster depending on the time of year, etc.

These PCMs and tunes are way way smarter than you think. They are watching and reacting to the weather conditions, water and oil temp, recent drive history, catalyst temps, knock sensors, etc...

It's not picking that AF on accident.

For what it's worth I work at Chrysler and had a lot of 1 on 1 time with the calibrators in my scat pack (392).

They don't need a wide band to know what the engine is doing in the NA range.

Just because the PCM isn't showing you the AF number you expect, doesn't mean it wasn't intentional.

11.6 afr? You say the car runs great, so, the first thing I would look at is the gauge/sensor itself. It's Aftermarket, so right off the bat I don't put any faith in it.

Is it a brand-new gauge or was it used on another car you race? Is the sensor clean? Clean it with oven cleaner and put it back in, re-try it. If it's a generic Bosch or Denso order a new one and try it. Sensor positioning is highly important: Is the O2 sensor at the correct length from the head?

I had an O2 sensor go bad on a high performance application that would still run great at WFO but there's no "check engine" light for it: similar to your aftermarket gauge. The only way I figured what the problem was when soot started to show up in the pipes. 12.5:1 compression, so I run my own fuel mix with Lead in it, so, it ruined the O2 sensor. What do your exhaust tips look like? You run race gas in your 392?

I know this is a race forum, but what is happening with your fuel mileage in normal driving of your car? Did it take a dump? If not, and everything is otherwise normal I'd say the gauge is the issue.

Check the little things first before re-engineering the whole car.

Finally, from an Engineering/Warranty standpoint: Dodge put millions of miles on that engine pre-production and if 11.6 at WFO is what's needed to protect it from burning up, that's what it needs. Don't mess with it. Tuner names mentioned here, (and I really like the "what happens if I push this button" reference ) have blown up plenty of Hemis. Especially "Hemi fever", Google him on the Ram Forums between 2004 and 2010 and see what comes up.

When I had mine www.ostdyno.com was one of the best tuners for them, and can do it remotely

if he blew up a bunch in the first few years he is probably one of the better ones by now...

This is why you see such good gains from long tube headers, there is already too much fuel and doing something to pull in more air makes more HP. Now if it was 12.5 or 13 AFR from the factory it would probably get too lean and burn stuff up so the factory played it safe and added a little extra fuel.

They do this with alot of vehicles for different reasons.

The SRT-4 crowd used to complain about running rich at WOT, and at the time I was acquainted with the development folks so I asked what the deal was.

On that specific car, I was told it was done for lifespan of the catalytic converter, leaner produced more heat than it could tolerate over the whole warranty lifespan.
Converters being real expensive to replace, even in 2006, but today would of course be worse.
They have to be really careful about that aspect of things.

It could be something similar or another combination of factors requiring the rich a/f, but believe me the guys calibrating that stuff aren't doing it out of ignorance.

PS this isn't top secret info as the same folks I asked were also on the srt forums of the day, providing the same answer.

This same reason applies to most efi cars. Run rich at wot to save the cats (and also more fuel during "cat overtemp" mode)

Cats get hotter with a rich mixture, my car is only rich at wide open throttle, not all the time, the wide band I am using is NTK, I am putting a flex fuel set up on it & this one is tunable & data logs with the wide band input, Baily's Hyperformance sells & installs this set up & they are very well known in the gen III world, Eflexfuel.com the Pro kit is the one that is tunable ONLY the fuel is . should pick up some power on E85 we will see

Some OEM EFI systems also add fuel over time. In a towing situation imagine being wide open for extended periods of time, they add fuel to keep rings and other things happy.