- #1
Thread Owner
Hello folks. I thought it best I introduce myself before @aceinspp rage bans me from the boards for my silence. I've been shopping these new 24+ Chargers for a few years waiting for Dodge to allow us Canadians to actually buy a 4 door. They never gave me my chance at the Daytona but they finally got their act together with the right incentives on the Sixpack I'd been specing for the last year or more. As of September 15th I bought home my '26 Charger Scat Pack Plus in Diamond Black, with the glass roof, 18 speaker sound system, Carbon & Suede, Black top and 11" Wheel package. Basically loaded except for the Demon Red seats that just do NOT appeal to me. For the moment she joins the garage with my Black 75 Dart and Black 11 Charger RT AWD. I love my 11 Charger HEMI + AWD. That car smoked Chevy's ZL1 supercharged Camaro 3 weeks after I bought it 3 red lights in a row and earned me a thumbs up from the Camaro driver. Up here in Alberta Canada, AWD is a necessity for the winters and on any street any day of the year you can enjoy all that HEMI grunt from every stop light. Our family decided we needed something newer and fewer miles on it and without the Daytona available in 4 door, I was still quite happy to pickup my new Sixpack. So far it's a great new car and drivers super well. Might not have the same type of torquey grunt that I'm used to, but it's geared to make up for it and has far more top end breath than I will need too often.
I've been a dodge guy since I rebuilt my 75 Dart (paint and interior) back in '92. It took a back seat around early 2000's when I had a Chrysler Dynasty for a daily and relegated the Dart to summer fun duties. In 2005 I tore my Dart apart and rebuilt it with a home brewed EFI system that I designed, programmed assembled and built all the tooling to tune it and use it back before Megasquirt and rusEFI and other such projects existed. I rebuild the engine in 2005 and again in 2009 after a valve piston kiss that got intimate. Currently she's a fully forged 408" motor breathing through a Tunnel ram, into Indy Edelbrocks CNC ported head and out through TTI stepped headers. A Comp solid roller makes it live and a GearVendors OD makes it move down the highway. She's got the oval track torsion bars, lowered all I can get and on the Caltracks and monoleafs out back plant it quite well, but not drag strip friendly. I built it similar to other Moparts members and was targeting that 550-575 HP range, and I think it was close back in the day. She was built to turn as well as go, but I have the wrong locker in the back to really try auto cross it and those years are behind me and my Dart anyway. That Dart has been not just family history but personal history as it drove me (literally and figuratively) to my Computer Engineering education as well as my software engineering career. Cars and computers pretty much defined my starry eyes youth and was very glad to put them both together in my Dart.
Beyond the computers I've been an "amateur" home renovator for me and my family for decades, having 20+ houses under my belt doing every manner of framing, drywall, roofing, siding, wiring, plumbing, flooring, painting, decks, stairs and all manner of construction tasks. My 11 Charger and the 2" hitch have been my only vehicle needed to do that. You can stick 30 2x4x9' lumber down the center of the 11 Charger without issue and have room for a few more cross ways and some 10' vac pipes if you are in a pinch. If you need to tow home 2000lb of sand in a trailer, that 11 Charger does a great job as long as you make sure the chains aren't dragging, watch that rear end's approach angles off the curbs and remember to drive gently with the trailer that's rated for 750lb. I don't know if I'll put the 26 through the same construction duty but I already got sawdust in it on my first weekend 4 days into ownership. I will get a 2" receiver when Curt or another company gets around to it (shouldn't there be something from the Jeep EV that would fit?).
For now I'm just getting my car setup. Need to block out this weekend for a Dashcam installation and block out the next weekend to clean it up again and get the ceramic coating done before my next highway trip through the bugs.
Longer term, I want to get into the CAN bus on these cars and fix some of the PITA behaviors, top of list being the Auto Start/Stop that I want defaulted to OFF and the startup exhaust valves to quiet mode instead of "piss my wife off and neighbors" mode that they seem to default to. I'd like to play around with the EV stuff like generating better sounds and user control over the Fratzonic Exhaust if I can swing the time and find someone with an EV locally that I can test with. I'm hoping things like the throttle and speed data are consistent between the 2 variants but won't know until I get into it someday.
I've been a dodge guy since I rebuilt my 75 Dart (paint and interior) back in '92. It took a back seat around early 2000's when I had a Chrysler Dynasty for a daily and relegated the Dart to summer fun duties. In 2005 I tore my Dart apart and rebuilt it with a home brewed EFI system that I designed, programmed assembled and built all the tooling to tune it and use it back before Megasquirt and rusEFI and other such projects existed. I rebuild the engine in 2005 and again in 2009 after a valve piston kiss that got intimate. Currently she's a fully forged 408" motor breathing through a Tunnel ram, into Indy Edelbrocks CNC ported head and out through TTI stepped headers. A Comp solid roller makes it live and a GearVendors OD makes it move down the highway. She's got the oval track torsion bars, lowered all I can get and on the Caltracks and monoleafs out back plant it quite well, but not drag strip friendly. I built it similar to other Moparts members and was targeting that 550-575 HP range, and I think it was close back in the day. She was built to turn as well as go, but I have the wrong locker in the back to really try auto cross it and those years are behind me and my Dart anyway. That Dart has been not just family history but personal history as it drove me (literally and figuratively) to my Computer Engineering education as well as my software engineering career. Cars and computers pretty much defined my starry eyes youth and was very glad to put them both together in my Dart.
Beyond the computers I've been an "amateur" home renovator for me and my family for decades, having 20+ houses under my belt doing every manner of framing, drywall, roofing, siding, wiring, plumbing, flooring, painting, decks, stairs and all manner of construction tasks. My 11 Charger and the 2" hitch have been my only vehicle needed to do that. You can stick 30 2x4x9' lumber down the center of the 11 Charger without issue and have room for a few more cross ways and some 10' vac pipes if you are in a pinch. If you need to tow home 2000lb of sand in a trailer, that 11 Charger does a great job as long as you make sure the chains aren't dragging, watch that rear end's approach angles off the curbs and remember to drive gently with the trailer that's rated for 750lb. I don't know if I'll put the 26 through the same construction duty but I already got sawdust in it on my first weekend 4 days into ownership. I will get a 2" receiver when Curt or another company gets around to it (shouldn't there be something from the Jeep EV that would fit?).
For now I'm just getting my car setup. Need to block out this weekend for a Dashcam installation and block out the next weekend to clean it up again and get the ceramic coating done before my next highway trip through the bugs.
Longer term, I want to get into the CAN bus on these cars and fix some of the PITA behaviors, top of list being the Auto Start/Stop that I want defaulted to OFF and the startup exhaust valves to quiet mode instead of "piss my wife off and neighbors" mode that they seem to default to. I'd like to play around with the EV stuff like generating better sounds and user control over the Fratzonic Exhaust if I can swing the time and find someone with an EV locally that I can test with. I'm hoping things like the throttle and speed data are consistent between the 2 variants but won't know until I get into it someday.
