Watch out for Dodge

[Tetge]

I was watching the NHRA eliminations from Denver, and, they showed some road tester taking the new 707 HP Dodge down the strip. He did a big impressive burnout and I did not notice any traction issues and it ran 12.17 at 116+ with zero drama and not much exhaust noise. The strip is at 6800' and it was hot so I am sure that the car would run 11's with better DA, but, the numbers in the Dodge video, particularly the 10.8, might be hard to duplicate based upon what I saw. It almost makes me think that Dodge used a sleeper to make their video for their advertisement, but, they wouldn't do that, would they?

[jhwalker]

I was watching the NHRA eliminations from Denver, and, they showed some road tester taking the new 707 HP Dodge down the strip. He did a big impressive burnout and I did not notice any traction issues and it ran 12.17 at 116+ with zero drama and not much exhaust noise. The strip is at 6800' and it was hot so I am sure that the car would run 11's with better DA, but, the numbers in the Dodge video, particularly the 10.8, might be hard to duplicate based upon what I saw. It almost makes me think that Dodge used a sleeper to make their video for their advertisement, but, they wouldn't do that, would they?

That is disappointing -- if you are Dodge upper management you have to do better than that. At least run the cheater car from the other vid I see all of the reasons, but how do the potential buyers get frothed up by this???

A PR debacle.

[Tetge]

I was watching the NHRA eliminations from Denver, and, they showed some road tester taking the new 707 HP Dodge down the strip. He did a big impressive burnout and I did not notice any traction issues and it ran 12.17 at 116+ with zero drama and not much exhaust noise. The strip is at 6800' and it was hot so I am sure that the car would run 11's with better DA, but, the numbers in the Dodge video, particularly the 10.8, might be hard to duplicate based upon what I saw. It almost makes me think that Dodge used a sleeper to make their video for their advertisement, but, they wouldn't do that, would they?

That is disappointing -- if you are Dodge upper management you have to do better than that. At least run the cheater car from the other vid I see all of the reasons, but how do the potential buyers get frothed up by this???

A PR debacle.

Of course, since the DA at Denver was 8000', or something along those lines, it is possible that Dodge used one of those Eastern strips that used to plague us back in the day when we were tying to run representative ET's out here with the Terminators. So, 93 octane, and negative DA might yield the 11.3x ET that they alleged and DR's could have lowered that to 10.88. Perhaps the engine control electronics on the Dodge are ultra sophisticated and it compensates and adjusts for octane and DA? I know that the door slammers and bikes were about 1/2 a second slower at Denver and even the rails and funny cars were slower. The track itself was prepped pretty well, so it was the DA that done them all In.

In short, Dodge may not have lied, and their car may have been stock, but, if so, they certainly ran it under ideal conditions, and, who knows how many runs it took them to get everything set up perfectly? But, when I saw the run on the NHRA show, and I saw the numbers, I was not impressed, as I personally know how slow a 12 second car is.

I did a search after making this post and I found info on the run. They said 12.14 @ 118 so, I had the numbers wrong. and they said the DA was 8600'. They showed a video of part of the run, but with no ET info, and they showed the burnout: http://www.dragzine.com/news/richard-ra ... ss-denver/

[jhwalker]

Smelling BS
Andrew Hines' first Professional race in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series came at Bandimere Speedway in 2002. The track will always hold a special memory because of that despite its unique challenges of racing at an elevation of more than 5,800 feet.

So they get from 5800 to 8500 D/A -- How does one gain 2700 D/A ? They suck.

[Tetge]

Smelling BS
Andrew Hines' first Professional race in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series came at Bandimere Speedway in 2002. The track will always hold a special memory because of that despite its unique challenges of racing at an elevation of more than 5,800 feet.

So they get from 5800 to 8500 D/A -- How does one gain 2700 D/A ? They suck.

The track elevation is 5800'. During the NHRA show on TV there was talk of 6800' DA, but, it was hot, and LACR used to gain 3000' DA on its worst days. So, 8500' DA would not have been impossible. But, again, who really knows, as the exact numbers and facts are not really shown. Because the Dodge is a big heavy pig of a car, I calculate that with a 200 driver, if the Dodge makes 600 RWHP, a Terminator would have the same power to weight ratio if it made 508 RWHP. So, the Dodge will need a lot of HP to make up for its heavy curb weight. Another example of how much the curb weight impacts the Dodge is that it would have to have 443.5 RWHP to have the same power to weight ratio as my 2012 GT, which only puts 376 to the wheels.

It's time to play the too fat polka.

[jhwalker]

It will be interesting to see the tuners find out what is possible. Stock, the Dodge driver is in for a BIG surprise if he/she comes up against a properly modded 03-04 Termy. My distant memory is that it took us less than $1800 to make the first round of big-gain mods. (no gears) The biggest RWHP gain for the money in the history of cars...

The Dodge already has the multiple tune built in? I do see a few Dodges down here in Central Mexico, usually when I go to Queretaro which has a population of over 1.5 million folks and lots of newish cars.