The blue-painted car in the following video is both sacrilegious and much better than its stock spec. Instead of a 3.5-liter V6, this 2009 Dodge Challenger now features a 6.0-liter LS mill with a 0.030-inch overbore.
Owned by Alberto Ramos from Orlando, Florida, the Challenger was purchased with a salvage title with a clear purpose in the current owner’s mind: to shame Hellcats and Demons on the strip. In a feature published by Hot Rod Magazine last February, we’re told that Ramos upgraded the 408 CID engine with Patriot LS3 heads and a 69-millimeter BorgWarner turbo.
A blow-through CSU carburetor with an Extreme Velocity hat, a 0.590-inch lift camshaft, Eagle forged rotating assembly, and a Turbo 400 transmission also need to be mentioned, along with air conditioning that still works if you can believe it. Since February 2020, the Challenger has received a slightly larger boosty snail with an 88-millimeter inducer for more sucking power.
Filmed at the strip by our friends at Drag Racing and Car Stuff, the LS-swapped turbo Challenger can run 10-second passes consistently in this particular specification. Estimated to crank out more than 800 horsepower, the Mopar machine with small-block Chevrolet V8 muscle can blitz the quarter-mile in 10.47 and 10.19 seconds, respectively.
The highest trap speed achieved by Ramos is 134.75 miles per hour (216.86 kilometers per hour), which is extremely impressive by Mopar standards. For reference, the Challenger SRT Super Stock makes 10.5-second passes with drag radials, 807 horsepower, and 707 pound-feet (959 Nm) of torque.
“Hellcat killer” is arguably the best way to describe the strip-slaying blasphemy in the following video, which is awesome in every single respect. It’s impressive how one can take a junkyard motor so far in such a short time, but it's even more impressive because this is Ramos’ first LS build.
“I did it all myself,” he told Hot Rod Magazine. “I got on YouTube, you know, hours and hours of just self-learning. All the machining was done by my friends at CW Pence Machining, but I put the engine together myself."
After a 1:43 scale model of a Ferrari 250 GTO sparked Mircea's interest for cars when he was a kid, an early internship at Top Gear sealed his career path. He's most interested in muscle cars and American trucks, but he takes a passing interest in quirky kei cars as well. Full profile
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