For me Nitrous is out... it reeks of fast and furious cheese and only has a place in drag racing where it is necessary. Its frequently added to low hp motors and abuse and poor installation leads to blown motors. Not worth the hassle or the ricer image imo.

Blowers - I can see the appeal, its less stress on the engine than turbos/nitrous and delivers good gains. However its costly and usually needs a good tuner to set up and map despite mailorder DIY applications being available. Can encourage a lot of young kids to ruin their motors by promising easy DIY horsepower.

Turbos - definatly more hassle than a supercharger and costs way more due to a lot of parts needing custom fabrication. Needs more mapping than a blower upgrade and theres likely to be fewer people who would offer this package. Definately will require a strip down to add forged internals etc.

I personally believe theres no replacement for displacement. The big 6.1 has a nice stock output identical to the old hemi. If i was going to keep the stock motor id probably go for big ported heads, headers, cat delete, side pipes and upgraded cam. This with a reflashed ecu would be an old skool way of going but should see me past 500hp and thats plenty to use on the street without uprating the chassis and brakes too much.

I have had a bit of a brainfart though and thought hmmmm you see all these restomod musclecar shops that take a 70's body from a cuda or camaro etc and then drop in the modern day fuel injected compact V8. Id like to see someone taking a new retro style challenger and dropping in a brand new big block carburettor fed crate hemi! 5-600hp from the engine alone and a real elephant motor under the hood! [8D]

 

I'm with you. Doing a turbo application is inane unless you're just looking to get into a magazine. Doing it right requires A LOT of work, a LOT of time needed to get it right, and there's a still appreciable level of danger to the motor. I could see it if you're building a non street legal car for the 1/4 mile (and if you were, why not get a crate motor??)

The 6.1L seems to respond so well to non forced induction upgrades that a supercharger sort of isn't the no brainer that it is for other motors. I'm pretty sure the Charger guys are getting ~500HP to the wheels with the mods you listed. That's more than enough for me.

 

I do not agree with that statement. Blowers are always more stressful to an engine/drivetrain at launch than a turbo.

 

I believe you're right, Jeremiah.
The turbocharger has to spool up / build boost from exhaust pressure, where the supercharger is tied directly to the crank speed, graduating it's effects directly proportionate to the engine RPMs.

My concern with a supercharger is their tendency to cause the cylinders to "oval out" over time/use.
I need to look more into this before bolting one up to my Challenger.

 

I have had both turbo and supercharged cars. I currently have an SRT-4 as a daily driver and a '03 supercharged Cobra (also had an '87 Grand National for 8 years awhile back as well as a '93 5.0 Mustang with a vortech). A properly sized turbo will spool up very quickly. Typically the turbo cars are running more boost than a supercharged car. My SRT-4 was 12 -13 psi stock vs 8 psi for my Cobra. My opinion? I don't see there is any measurable difference between the two as far as engine wear is concerned. I have NEVER damaged any of my charged engines even after increasing the boost levels. There is one big killer of a boosted engine: DETONATION As long as you keep the engine out of detonation it should live a good life. Air/fuel ratio needs to be around 11.5 to 12 to 1 so the engine does not lean out(which will cause detonation and a dramatic increase in cylinder temps). Next up is the bottom end. More specifically pistons and rods. A hypereutectic piston is what a lot of the newer non-charged motors use. While it is stronger than the old cast pistons it doesn't match the strength of a forged piston. The factories use the hyper pistons because: They are cheaper than forged and also have much tighter piston to wall clearance which reduces wear/rock and blowby. The other big thing is boost vs timing vs octane. These 3 items will play a major part in what can be accomplished. In most cases people will want to run pump gas for convenience and cost. With 93 octane pump I have found a maximum of 16 -17 psi can usually be run as long as TOTAL timing doesn't exceed 18-19 degrees. Things that help REDUCE detonation are: Cooling the intake charge(intercooler, etc), increasing the octane of the fuel, running the engine a LITTLE cooler(180 deg) reducing compression ratio and reducing timing. I can tell you I bolted a 5 psi Vortech supercharger on my old Mustang and with no other changes picked up 6 mph in the quarter and over a half sec ET on street tires. I ran this set up for 8 years and NEVER had any problems. This was on a totally stock bottom end also. I ran 23 deg of timing and used 93 octane fuel. I also verified my air/fuel ratio was around 12 to 1 which is ideal for a charged engine. If I were going to supercharge a 5.7 or 6.1 I would keep the boost levels to 5 or 6 psi and make sure the fuel system and timing were where they needed to be. This would provide a considerable boost in performance without a big sacrifice in reliability. Just my 2 cents on the matter.

 

I was going to respond similar to 1971chall, but not as much detail.

I think the amount of mods you want to due the the challenger, is entirely up to you and money of course. If I wanted a hp monster then, I would most certain adding Forced Induction to the motor. Like said earlier when done correctly, both types are safe and efficent (KR/detonation in not your friend).

I would probably due like the OP stated, mostly bolt ons, as well as a really good tune.

 

I may be showing my age here but back in the 70's I was one of the first guys in my area using Nitrous, I found that by building a simple water injection system (using winsheild washer fluid instead of water) I was able to increase the Nitrous charge wthout detonation, this should work with forced induction as well.
The water injection system was a simple plate under the carb with a tube to the windsheild washer tank that used the engines vacuum to get the water into the manifold.
Maybe worth a try.

 

This is true only for positive displacement superchargers and is not the problem with the Paxton Vortech offerings that are coming in a couple weeks. We install these alday long on Vipers and see a 200 plus hp gain. The drivability is factory stock and the boost comes on like turbos lessening stress on the rest of the driveline.

I will be getting the first 4 srt units and the first 4 rt units in the next couple weeks. These will be plug and play no regrets and dealer installed by us.

The srt hp...540, the rt hp...430 bang for the buck has been served!

 

Will you also be offering a mail order type kit for these??? Inquiring minds want to know

 

I have confirmation on the polished Vortech supercharger kits for the srt. The kits retail for $6638.95 ready to go. If you have questions or want to talk pricing, status, or installed prices call.