Joined
·
1,569 Posts
I've been racing my other rides and I've given the Challenger to the girls to drive to school. I do drive the Challenger once in a while and do the normal maintenance. I thought I'd wait a good long time to get a feeling of the car with supercharger.
Street behavior daily driving. The car is perfectly behaved. Power comes on linearly and the engine pulls cleanly to redline. The exhaust is actually slightly louder under boost, I have a stock 2012 R/T auto exhaust. The engine / supercharger performance is equivalent to an OEM setup. Good enough to let teen age daughters drive it... um not the sons... you gotta be crazy to do that. I should add that other than checking the fluids I've done nothing to the car since summer.
Overall handling. The supercharger is only 28 lbs, and this is easily offset by getting a lighter battery. I've had my sister in law's SRT8 to play with this past summer, so I can say that given the about the same tire and suspension, the SC 3.5 is a much more toss-able and liner ride and even forgiving for the most part. I will also say at my boost level, the SRT8 is faster through the twistiest but a real handful, one has to brake earlier with the SRT8 so as not to overwhelm the tire and be very careful of power oversteer out of the corner. I would speculate a higher boost 3.5 5 speed, stall with gears and a posi would be a dream package able to carry the speed into the corner, and have more power out of the turn. The 3.5 low boost 4 speed auto just does not have enough oats out of the hole. To sum it up the SC 3.5 is more of a scalpel and the SRT8 is more of a sledge hammer.
MPG, it has been about the same, I drove the car for a while with the larger injectors and program but no belt on the supercharger, and actually got slightly better MPG... dunno funny though and yes you can indeed drive with the supercharger on the car and hooked up just with no belt to it.
People, many people are interested in looking at the shinny supercharger, and yes literally the very next question is why did you not just buy a hemi??:scratchhead: I tell them the same thing, anybody can buy a stock anything or do something 10,000 other guys have already done. I want to do something different.
Kit: Vendor support is 110%, kit is easy to put on. For me the vacuum block was way too complicated and I just built a T so it is PCV vac from manifold to T to (gauge in the car, and BOV). I built my own bracket to the P/S reservoir, and some small L brackets to the kit's overflow tank. I'm building my own intake to the supercharger. Note there is nothing wrong with just doing what the kits says. I just like to tweak stuff.
I may look into putting on an intercooler under a shaker hood. Other projects depending. Corky Bell is local to me and he built an intercooler for my S40 M6 Volvo a while back.
I can't recommend the supercharger kit enough, it puts the very last thing that was needed on a SE: more power without sacrificing weight and agility.
Street behavior daily driving. The car is perfectly behaved. Power comes on linearly and the engine pulls cleanly to redline. The exhaust is actually slightly louder under boost, I have a stock 2012 R/T auto exhaust. The engine / supercharger performance is equivalent to an OEM setup. Good enough to let teen age daughters drive it... um not the sons... you gotta be crazy to do that. I should add that other than checking the fluids I've done nothing to the car since summer.
Overall handling. The supercharger is only 28 lbs, and this is easily offset by getting a lighter battery. I've had my sister in law's SRT8 to play with this past summer, so I can say that given the about the same tire and suspension, the SC 3.5 is a much more toss-able and liner ride and even forgiving for the most part. I will also say at my boost level, the SRT8 is faster through the twistiest but a real handful, one has to brake earlier with the SRT8 so as not to overwhelm the tire and be very careful of power oversteer out of the corner. I would speculate a higher boost 3.5 5 speed, stall with gears and a posi would be a dream package able to carry the speed into the corner, and have more power out of the turn. The 3.5 low boost 4 speed auto just does not have enough oats out of the hole. To sum it up the SC 3.5 is more of a scalpel and the SRT8 is more of a sledge hammer.
MPG, it has been about the same, I drove the car for a while with the larger injectors and program but no belt on the supercharger, and actually got slightly better MPG... dunno funny though and yes you can indeed drive with the supercharger on the car and hooked up just with no belt to it.
People, many people are interested in looking at the shinny supercharger, and yes literally the very next question is why did you not just buy a hemi??:scratchhead: I tell them the same thing, anybody can buy a stock anything or do something 10,000 other guys have already done. I want to do something different.
Kit: Vendor support is 110%, kit is easy to put on. For me the vacuum block was way too complicated and I just built a T so it is PCV vac from manifold to T to (gauge in the car, and BOV). I built my own bracket to the P/S reservoir, and some small L brackets to the kit's overflow tank. I'm building my own intake to the supercharger. Note there is nothing wrong with just doing what the kits says. I just like to tweak stuff.
I may look into putting on an intercooler under a shaker hood. Other projects depending. Corky Bell is local to me and he built an intercooler for my S40 M6 Volvo a while back.
I can't recommend the supercharger kit enough, it puts the very last thing that was needed on a SE: more power without sacrificing weight and agility.