Making a 2010 Dodge Challenger SRT8 Outperform a 2015 Challenger Hellcat - Detroit Muscle S3, E11

Today at Detroit Muscle it's a brand new build with a late model Mopar that will give one of you the idea that we're taking down a Hellcat. They haven't discovered it yet. This is our next project vehicle. It's a

2010

Challenger

srt8

, it now comes with the 425 horsepower 6.1 liter Hemi v8 engine, but it sounds better than a 4,000 pound car on the road. Now, below the pony cars offered by the big three, this one is the biggest and heaviest, which has always posed a challenge. To the Chrysler engineers, that said, this car is roomier and a little more comfortable, especially if you're bigger than this guy here now, despite its girth, this thing is no slouch, it will do 0 to 60 in 5.1 seconds, but in comparison. to the top of the mountain when it comes to late-model

challenger

s, this is a light year in

2015

, Dodge dropped a bomb on the modern

muscle

car landscape scorched the earth with the introduction of the Hellcat

challenger

, injecting a huge amount of enthusiasm throughout the Challenger lineup, all 5,000 first-year Challenger Hellcat units produced, sold out almost immediately and, along with its sibling, the Charger Hellcat, changed the face of modern

muscle

, okay, so if we're going to get serious with our

srt8

here, the first thing we'll do.

What I have to do is compare it to the Hellcat, now this thing is armed to the teeth and touted as the most powerful muscle car ever produced by anyone, whose 707 horsepower could be planted in the ground through a 8 speed or a 6 speed. Manual, everything is limited by a set of six-piston Brembos with 15.4-inch rotors behind 20-by-nine-and-a-half-inch wheels, the interior is as luxurious as it is powerful, and the engine is capable of generating all that power thanks to a a supercharger that generates 11 pounds of boost fed through these in the port disguised as headlights, a set of diffusers on the hood keep things cool by moving hot air out of the way when Dodge dropped this bomb, the world sat up and paid attention, it's a superposition of muscles. car and supercar with all the necessary ingredients to become a super predator, so that's what we're up against, if we plan to beat this thing, we'll have to generate at least 707 horsepower at the crankshaft and then "We'll have to put that power on the ground, not only do we have to increase the handling and stopping capabilities of this thing to a whole new level; at the end of the day, we have a lot of work ahead of us.” We're teaming up with Powerstop to create this monster, the ultimate challenger to Power Stop, which we've nicknamed the alley cat and you know what we're going to do when it's done, we're going to hand this bad boy over to one of you.

Our goal is to beat a Hellcat with it, but if your goal is to take it home, stand strong, calm, the good news is that we don't have to do all the work ourselves, we may find that we are lacking something in this old car. There's no time to sit in the building and those old guys down there didn't take the engine power out of that old Hemi, they'll take the stock block headers and use them as the basis for a 426 cubic inch twin-turbo stroker. The performance they will generate with this version will eclipse even what a Hellcat does well, for now we can't say much more than that, but there is no doubt that we are going to have to fight pretty hard for those Hellcats and while we are busy putting that engine together, We're going to work on the rest of the things, like the suspension and brakes.

The first thing we'll address on our challenger is the front suspension, so we went to Summit Racing and got a complete box. it has a 35 millimeter stabilizer bar and some pretty complicated cold controls that allow you to lower the car up to 2.3 inches and it also has a 46 millimeter piston and you can adjust the rebound and compression just by turning that knob now the first one What we're going to do To do before lifting the car is to remove these nuts that hold the upper support to the body. We have to remove these factory calipers and remove the rotors.

Now we can cut this little retainer. The screw jack can be placed under the lower ball joint to maintain pressure on the spring. We will then hit the shock bolts with some wd-40 specialized rust release penetrating spray and then remove the retaining nut. The upper control arm shaft leaves some pressure on the screw jack and then tap it a few times to release it. Now we can remove the strut. The process to install that new shock and spring setup is simply the reverse of the removal process. Before we buckle that front end up completely, let's change this sway bar, we're upgrading from a 30 millimeter bar to a 35 millimeter bar that will help us in the corner of the department, this one will be stiffer and will help the front.

In the end, do what you're supposed to do with the sway bar, we can re-finish the threaded shock installation, including a set of new sway bar links from rockauto.com, we can finally tighten the upper shock mount bolts and the front part is ready. Next, let's find out how we plan to make that Dodge handle tons of power. Alright guys, we're ready to get started on the back half of our Mopar. Now this thing has independent rear suspension like many of the newer Muscle Cars. there and these things work great if you're carving the corners, but they're not so good if you've got sticky high horsepower tires and you're trying to launch this thing and go straight pretty fast, but there are some options there to fix them, the first improvement that the People usually do is change their half shafts, these are g-force performance and have one piece billet tubs, upgraded internals and the half shaft itself is made from an aerospace steel that is substantially stronger compared to the OEM ones, but Depending on your power level, this upgrade may not be enough because the next weakest link is a center section, but there is a cure for that: this is the G-Force Performance Engineering nine-inch IRS conversion kit and it is Pretty serious setup, it's built to handle up to 2000 horsepower, but it's still a Bolton kit, just pop this unit into the housing and it's pretty much ready to go under the car without cutting or grinding the axle shafts that come in the kit.

They are similar to what we mentioned above, but have 35 striation intersections. Now it's time for us to get back to work so we can put all this stuff back under the car. The first step to changing this rear part is to prepare the crib. To remove it from the car, that involves bolting on the rear intake, then we'll lower the car and place the entire assembly on a heavy-duty rolling cart. We'll use this tool box we got from Matco, some body bolts. is all it takes to free the subframe of the car, then we can lift it apart, look at your springs, no loose tension, the rear end is loose, well we have our rear end assembly from our Challenger and on this car.

Here in the open air, where it's easier for us to work and easier for you to see now the core of our rear is the center section here, but we can't just unscrew it by itself, we have to get some other one. First get things out of the way, like the axle shafts and spindle. The first thing we are going to do is remove the axle. First we'll remove this trailing arm from the axle and get it out of the way and then we'll get to work. When removing the calipers when removing the rotors, be sure to take into account the balance of the unit on your cart.

Now you can move on to the sway bar link. We'll go ahead and remove the sway bar next as well. We'll separate these upper axle arms and the lower control arm, we also need to undo this wheel speed sensor, we'll hit the hub with a little more wd-40 to release the spray and then we'll go to town, one lever works okay to get the axle shafts out, then we'll roll the base back to access this rear differential bolt, a couple more in the rear, this intersection is clear for us, stay next, we get our Challenger to stop in a penny hey welcome back while they're gone we went ahead and cleaned out our entire base and installed some new bushings in our control arms.

Now these bushings come with our suspension kit that we got from Summit Racing and depending on what angle you install them at, that determines how much positive or negative camber. is built in, we also have the rear end fully assembled, now this gem is ready to go, it is heavy, our new center section kit came with some upgrades to the urethane bushings, so we will install them with the mounting bolts, we are also using blue screw locker. on all of these bolts to keep them at home, these axle shafts screw into the splined inputs using both provided in the kit.

The last thing we need to install is the sway bar that we got from Summit Racing. Now, this is an I. Bach piece too and this is pretty much the reason we had to remove the k member because it's at the top and you can't pass through it after we tighten it, all of this can fit under the car, finally we can We will lower the body most of the way

making

room for the new springs we got from Summit Racing. It comes with an adjustable hanger that allows you to lower the car if you wish.

We put ours on the lowest setting to make installation easier. We'll set the ride height later. We can also install Summit's high performance shocks. Now we can lower the body completely and get the body bolts working properly. Now that we have the suspension fully buckled it's time to start looking at the brakes that we will be using on our challenger, there is Chris who has stopping power, as we said before we will be partnering with them on this build, Chris let's start talking about the brakes that we will use. using on our well brand srt8 this is the power stop Street and track brake system let's start with these rotors these are the evolution power stop rotors drilled and slotted the drilled holes help keep the temperature of the brakes and slots down They help keep the braking surface clean.

They are also zinc dichromate plated to keep them free of corrosion and rust from the elements. Well, you said these kits are for street and track. How does that work with pills? These are our track type heads. They have a carbon fiber ceramic formula. Made for maximum braking on the track, they are also fade resistant up to 1200 degrees to extend the life of your track day pads. We also include our street warrior z26 pads for quiet, dust-free braking for everyday driving. Both sets of pads come with all the necessary mounting hardware and lubricant, we have also included our red powder coated calipers in this kit.

As you know, we're going after the Hellcat with this. So what makes a brake kit like this keep up with something like this? The key is really in the tracked brake pads, they were designed on the track for a maximum coefficient of friction to allow us to compete with the larger brakes that come standard on the Hellcat. Well, it looks like we're in pretty good shape so far. As the brakes slam on our challenger and we should be able to beat even a Hellcat and apples-to-apples stopping tests, there's no need to waste time, let's put these things in the car while Chris and Mark hook up the brakes.

I'll tell you one of the advantages of this kit. This electric stop upgrade does something that many upgrades don't, which is preserve the bias of the brakes on your car. Ouch, manufacturers put a lot into development and a big part of that is the front end. to back off the braking bias when you start to mess with it by introducing larger components, especially if it's only at the front, you can decrease your braking ability by changing the balance, this electric stop kit eliminates that problem, while Chris looks great, thank you very much and good luck. you'll come out when we get this going yeah it was absolutely a pleasure for me and you see hey guys the next thing we want to do on our Challenger project is a little bit of measuring so we can determine what the offset for our wheels will need to be Now, we're planning on upsizing a little bit compared to what this thing had when it came in the door now, sometimes when you do that kind of measurement to determine the gap between the back and the offset it can be a little tricky, well , we have a tool that we want to show you.

Wheel fitment is what we have and allows you to accurately and easily measure your back spacing and offset every time you order your kit. We have optional plates. which have different stud patternsDepending on what you're working on, the first thing you want to do here is adjust one clamp to pace the tire, so run this screw down to hold it in place, do this on all four clamps and then take the section center of the tool and set it for the width of the wheel you are looking for, in our case it is 10 inches. We have attached half of the clamps to the center section and with it fixed on the heel we can slide. the other half in place and now we can put everything in our cube and start measuring once we have it centered on the lugs.

Loosening this adjustment knob allows you to slide the tire in and out, we are hitting the inside wheel. Now it's time to choose the casing, so it's too far in, let's take it out with a five and a half inch gap back. It looks like it will give us the perfect amount of clearance between the side of the tire and the side of the car. wheels, we've all been there, you're working on something and you break the head off a bolt and end up stuck on whatever you're working on. Well, let me show you this cool little tool from Summit Racing.

Called a broken bolt removal system, it uses a three-step process where you attach them to a high-speed grinder and prepare the surface of the broken bolt to allow you to drill it without damaging the threads in the hole. This flattens the surface, chamfers it and directs her to accept an extractor. Now this set is for a 1/2 inch bolt, but they are available in many other sizes; Well, there are old car parts or neglected tools that we all have. rusty items found in the store now those things are not a lost cause because you can remove the rust with Metal Rescue.

It is a water-based rust remover that is non-toxic, non-hazardous, and biodegradable. It is not an acid, so it is super safe but extremely effective. Soak your rusty stuff in the solution, rinse and dry, then after the rust has been removed, quickly spray it with a dry coat of rust preventative to prevent it from coming back, check out how well it worked on this old tool box, you can see that half of it is It has been cleaned and kept rust free, that's all the time we have for now, keep it between the trenches.