I have a VERY nice 2012 Challenger in the shop, a 6 speed 19k mile car with a supercharger and a manual transmission. It was originally supercharged by the old Arrington Motorsports on the OEM long block. After several years like this the #1 cylinder gave up, it's got no compression. Here I will chronicle the engine swap and tune as well as other mods I do to it. We plan on doing a driveshaft, twin disk clutch, and methanol kit.
Just before the major disassembly
So I finally got some time to update this post - I have the drive train out of the car, and I pulled the drivers side head - I found two pistons that popped the ring lands. The car was only at 8 psi, so I suspect the tune was a bit lean. Here are some pics:
Cylinder #1
Cylinder #7
Cylinder #1 head. The piece of piston obviously spent some time bouncing around in there, pretty gnarly. Cylinder 7's combustion chamber is clean, must have been sent right out the exhaust valve.
Popped a couple pistons out. Here is the worst piston, #1 - I think the ring-land pieces spent so much time bouncing around and being squished in-between the piston and head - it actually cracked the piston. The ring packs were actually folded over each other and there were sections with no ring coverage - crazy. I cant believe this piston didn't disintegrate or make all kind of noise.
Look at how clean the rod bearings are, no wear or damage at all, insane!
Some goodies from the bottom of the oil pan!
Here is where we sit now, waiting for the Ray Barton/A2 speed forged and studded long block.
The growing pile of parts, I've never seen a car with so many splash shields, panels and covers before - LOL.
After many significant delays, the engine finally made it here!!
The build quality seems really good, no flash or machine debris anywhere or on any surfaces. It's a completely forged/studded engine built on a Hellcat block with Thitek CNC ported heads. The head work is nice, very clean CNC work and very consistent. The intake ports are gigantic now.
Im also using an oversize ATI Super Damper so the supercharger will spin a little faster now.
Here are a few pics of the crank/rods/studs.
Exhaust port:
We put a SPEC twin disk in the car since it was apart, the OEM clutch wasn't in bad shape but was pretty glazed. This is a really nice clutch, machining and fitment was top notch, came with a new flywheel and all new bolts too. Popped in a new pilot bearing as well.
Talk about a sexy clutch! This thing is awesome.
In addition to the keyway that was added to the crank, I deiced to pin it as well. The owner says he may want to step up to one of the bigger Kenne Bell superchargers in the future now that he has a fully forged engine, this is cheap insurance.
Cleaned out everything really well before assembly as well.
The owners wanted to help when it came time to put the engine back in and I aim to please! Put the engine and trans in as one piece.
Tucked in and ready to start reassembly.
A "few" hours later.
The car is going to get tuned and we'll break it in a bit, add a SNOW meth kit, a Driveshaft Shop driveshaft, some Nitto 555 drag radials, and maybe a smaller supercharger pulley for the final dyno tune!
Updates to follow.
The car is still on the road and the owners are very happy with it! We are already talking about "stage 2" mods.