Help with 2006 5.7 Hemi for disabled son's drag car

[cpenner]

Greetings! I'm a lot of a newbie when it comes to tuning. I'm looking for some pointers. It's a long story that I'll try to make short.

My son (21) uses a power wheelchair due to his disabilities. He is a car guy who loves everything automotive. When he turned 16 - he wasn't able to get a driver's license due to his limitations with strength and reaction speed. It just about crushed him.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity, he went out and bought a 2006 Dodge Charger 5.7. He takes it to the local dragstrip and has volunteer drivers take his car down the track. He rides shotgun, and is responsible for both driver strategy and car modifications. We have a blast - but we are not going very fast yet. The car has an exhaust (not sure which one) and a cold air intake. Otherwise it's stock. Our fastest pass was 14.8 seconds. (I'm blaming his old all season tires. He is saving his disability pension for some fresh rubber this year.)

One of the "make a wish" organizations made him a "Get Doug Racing" package last year. Among some other stuff, it contained of a folding power wheelchair that he can put in the trunk of his Charger and a MPVI3.

And here's my question finally. We want to start seeing if we can get a bit more speed. He's just started tire shopping for some grip - but we're pretty sure there's more power under the hood. I doubt it's been tuned for the intake/exhaust combo.

He's probably going to be looking for a tune. We're nowhere near capable of doing it ourselves, but maybe an e-tune is in the future.

The track opens again (weather dependent) next weekend. I'd love to log some runs and see if anyone can let us know where we should start looking. I've tried logging using a laptop with VCM Scanner on some previous runs but didn't seem to get anything useful. I'm a software developer - so I'm pretty computer happy - but I don't necessarily understand which sensors I should be logging and how to select them.

Maybe with a few runs logged someone can help me see if there are seconds hiding in the tune, or if he should be focusing his (limited) funds on other go fast goodies.

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[jefo]

A 180 thermostat and a proper tune. A stock SRT8 intake is also probably better for the track, as most aftermarket intakes have High IAT's from pulling underhood air.

People on here will ask that you post a read of your stock engine/trans tune file; I'm sure others will chime in also.

[edcmat-l1]

Touching story.

Aside from that, there isn't a whole bunch of HP to be picked up tuning an otherwise stock normally aspirated engine. But by reviewing data logs and time slips you should be able to pick up some ET and a little bit of MPH. Traction is key so first and foremost should be good drag radial tires and then need to pay a lot of attention to how the cars leaves. That's both driver technique and vehicle suspension.

This channel config should be most of what you need for a decent track data log. Need to post data logs along with time slips. And the current tune file.

Oh yeah, vehicle needs to be in best mechanical condition possible. Fresh plugs, oil, good fuel, clean filters, etc.

Chipping away at drag racing is as much about experience and driver technique as it is about tuning.

DODGE2015.Channels.xml