RE: Dodge Charger SRT8: PH Carpool

[Jimtasteek]

Stilltim said:

I've owned a 2016 version of the same car (now called the SRT 392) for over a year. It has the stock exhaust. If the cylinder deactivation is audible, I haven't noticed it.

Edited by Stilltim on Thursday 22 June 02:59

I can't speak for the newer models but the stock exhaust on the 2012 has a valve that activates along with the 4cyl mode to mute the sound (Dodge's engineers admitted it's not the most desirable noise). My aftermarket exhaust sounds phenomenal but has no such valve.

[Stilltim]

Jimtasteek said:

I can't speak for the newer models but the stock exhaust on the 2012 has a valve that activates along with the 4cyl mode to mute the sound (Dodge's engineers admitted it's not the most desirable noise). My aftermarket exhaust sounds phenomenal but has no such valve.

So I gathered from your earlier posts in the thread. And, although I don't hear it, It may be that my car does make a very muted noise. I hardly ever drive it without turning the radio on. The base speaker system in these SRT vehicles is quite nice.

Other than that, I agree with most of the stuff in your original post. Nice daily driver. Very comfortable. Convenient if you have kids (plenty of room for them and just a little tap on the accelerator makes them giggle like crazy).

18 MPG on average is spot on. The car's computer tells me I've averaged 18.2 over its lifetime. But, my usage is a little heavier on highway miles than city miles. With cruise control on, it will creep into the low 20s.

Yes.... large black cars... truly delightful to try to keep clean....

You may be right about the 2012 version looking a bit meaner than the current version, but the 392s are beautiful cars in person and much larger and more intimidating than they tend to look in photos.



BTW, if you get a chance to see your car's sibling, the 300 SRT-8 in person, they're equally mean in their own way.

[Matt Harper]

Jimtasteek said:

I can't speak for the newer models but the stock exhaust on the 2012 has a valve that activates along with the 4cyl mode to mute the sound (Dodge's engineers admitted it's not the most desirable noise). My aftermarket exhaust sounds phenomenal but has no such valve.

I don't think this is correct. Mopar introduced active (dual-mode) exhaust system in 2015 model year - pre 2015 had a conventional, but still very efficient system.
The MDS (cylinder de-activation) is triggered by light throttle openings and low road speed conditions, when the transmission is in full auto mode and 'sport' and 'track-pak' settings are off. It will then toggle between running 4 or 8 cylinders, dependent on throttle demand and load.
Mine switches modes very fast (milliseconds). It sounds muted in 4 cyl mode because there is insufficient exhaust flow to activate the sensor that opens bypass valves in the exhaust. The bypass is activated by the TPS and the amount of gas flowing through the muffler.

[Matt Harper]

Stilltim said:

You may be right about the 2012 version looking a bit meaner than the current version, but the 392s are beautiful cars in person and much larger and more intimidating than they tend to look in photos.

I'm not so sure, I think your car looks awesome and would be my weapon of choice if I needed 4 doors. The rear facia treatment on the current Charger is absolutely gorgeous in my humble opinion.

Here's a similar view of my 392 Scat Pack

[bloomen]

I did a few thousand miles in a V6 version of this.

It was super comfortable and a great cruiser. The build quality was shockingly bad though. I hope they sorted it for later versions.

[Matt Harper]

bloomen said:

The build quality was shockingly bad though. I hope they sorted it for later versions.

The build quality of what? Compared to what?

[Stilltim]

Matt Harper said:

I'm not so sure, I think your car looks awesome and would be my weapon of choice if I needed 4 doors. The rear facia treatment on the current Charger is absolutely gorgeous in my humble opinion.

The new Chargers are still my preference as well. But, the more I look at the Challengers and the pre-2015 Chargers, the more their retro styling grows on me.

Nice looking car. Does your scat pack Challenger have the Super Bee logo on it? That seems to be one of the key badging differences between the Scat Pack and the standard R/Ts.

[Stilltim]

Matt Harper said:

The build quality of what? Compared to what?

I wonder if he's complaining about the look of the interior. That's possibly a valid point. Interiors are often where American car companies seem to pinch pennies. But, it is very comfortable and has a huge number of built in goodies. (My favorite... other than that satellite radio... is the garage door opener built into the ceiling.)

Going by the photo of Jimasteek's interior at the start of the thread, the interior hasn't changed much since 2012.



The shift lever is clearly different and the leather seats that are standard in the SRT models look like they have a bit more fancy stitching than they used.to. But. otherwise the interiors are pretty similar.

Also, the infotainment system has been upgraded several times since then. Here's an SRT screen from the 2016 version:

[Matt Harper]

Stilltim said:

Matt Harper said:

I'm not so sure, I think your car looks awesome and would be my weapon of choice if I needed 4 doors. The rear facia treatment on the current Charger is absolutely gorgeous in my humble opinion.

The new Chargers are still my preference as well. But, the more I look at the Challengers and the pre-2015 Chargers, the more their retro styling grows on me.

Nice looking car. Does your scat pack Challenger have the Super Bee logo on it? That seems to be one of the key badging differences between the Scat Pack and the standard R/Ts.

I don't see any retro styling cues in the current or previous iteration of the Charger - the car most visualize when Charger is mentioned is a 2 door 'fuselage' car with hidden lights and flying buttress C-pillars a la Dukes of Hazzard.

I ordered mine with stripe delete, I don't care for the deck lid stripe or the ones they put on the hood. Stripe delete option means that I get the leather/alcantara sports seat, but with R/T logo embroidery, rather than superbee. I removed the superbee/6.4 fender badge and replaced with superbee only and added the 392 Hemi badges to the hood, that are OEM on the Shaker version of my car.

[Matt Harper]

Stilltim said:

Matt Harper said:

The build quality of what? Compared to what?

I wonder if he's complaining about the look of the interior. That's possibly a valid point. Interiors are often where American car companies seem to pinch pennies. But, it is very comfortable and has a huge number of built in goodies. (My favorite... other than that satellite radio... is the garage door opener built into the ceiling.)

Going by the photo of Jimasteek's interior at the start of the thread, the interior hasn't changed much since 2012.



The shift lever is clearly different and the leather seats that are standard in the SRT models look like they have a bit more fancy stitching than they used.to. But. otherwise the interiors are pretty similar.

Also, the infotainment system has been upgraded several times since then. Here's an SRT screen from the 2016 version:

Yes maybe he is complaining about the look - which is subjective and has zero to do with build quality.

I owned a 2007 Chrysler 300C SRT8 that I put 60,000 miles on over two and a half years. It was extremely well put together (build quality) nothing rattled, squeaked or fell off it in all the time I had it. It was metallic black and lived in harsh, sunny FL and the clear coat was perfect when I parted with it. The only thing that let it down was the materials used on the door caps, dashboard and center console.

The interior upgrade on all of these LX platform cars is impressive - my car is significantly better screwed together than my brother's 2016 328 BMW, which squeaks and groans in a very disappointing way.

[Stilltim]

Matt Harper said:

Yes maybe he is complaining about the look - which is subjective and has zero to do with build quality.

I owned a 2007 Chrysler 300C SRT8 that I put 60,000 miles on over two and a half years. It was extremely well put together (build quality) nothing rattled, squeaked or fell off it in all the time I had it. It was metallic black and lived in harsh, sunny FL and the clear coat was perfect when I parted with it.

I ran into a guy who had a Charger RT that he'd put 175,000 miles on. He'd taken it to the track on multiple occasions and he claimed to have driven it hard every day. He seemed extremely pleased at how well it had held up and had recently added a Charger 392 to his stable. The cars do have some issues, but what I've been hearing is that they're more electrical in nature than mechanical. It's an old platform. The mechanics are tried and true.

Matt Harper said:

The only thing that let it down was the materials used on the door caps, dashboard and center console.

Yeah, that's what I was referring to... and what I've seen criticized in a lot of reviews of the SRT vehicles. Those components are all plastic masquerading (poorly, I might add) as more expensive materials.

[Jimtasteek]

Matt Harper said:

I don't think this is correct. Mopar introduced active (dual-mode) exhaust system in 2015 model year - pre 2015 had a conventional, but still very efficient system.
The MDS (cylinder de-activation) is triggered by light throttle openings and low road speed conditions, when the transmission is in full auto mode and 'sport' and 'track-pak' settings are off. It will then toggle between running 4 or 8 cylinders, dependent on throttle demand and load.
Mine switches modes very fast (milliseconds). It sounds muted in 4 cyl mode because there is insufficient exhaust flow to activate the sensor that opens bypass valves in the exhaust. The bypass is activated by the TPS and the amount of gas flowing through the muffler.

Hi Matt

I'm basing my info on articles like this: http://m.wardsauto.com/news-analysis/chrysler-adds...

I may be wrong but I believe there is some sort of vavle system at play in 2012 srt exhausts.

[Matt Harper]

Jimtasteek said:

Hi Matt

I'm basing my info on articles like this: http://m.wardsauto.com/news-analysis/chrysler-adds...

I may be wrong but I believe there is some sort of vavle system at play in 2012 srt exhausts.

Very mysterious. I'm a bit of a Mopar geek and I can find no reference to this other than the article you posted.

Below is a 2012 LX platform SRT8 exhaust as in the Mopar parts book. Below that is the 2015 SRT 392 version - as you can see, very different. In the 2015 diagram, components numbered 7 and 8 are the sensors and actuators for the dual-mode system.

If your article is accurate and SRT8 did indeed have some form of dual-mode system, it appears that they were very coy about it.

[Stilltim]

Matt Harper said:

Very mysterious. I'm a bit of a Mopar geek and I can find no reference to this other than the article you posted.

If your article is accurate and SRT8 did indeed have some form of dual-mode system, it appears that they were very coy about it.

Since they represent Chrysler's cutting edge, much of what SRT does is considered a trade secret. So, yes. It would not surprise me if they were being coy about it.

[culpz]

Hmmm... I'm not sure if i like it if i'm being honest. It definitely looks aggressive and mean as most American muscle cars should do. But, i can't help think that it just looks too high up and SUV-like. Probably something i need to see in the flesh to make proper judgement.

For me, i much prefer the Dodge Challenger. If i was going to have a LHD American car, then that would probably be it. It's certainly very awesome to have cars like this over here though. How does it feel driving it on UK roads? Does it feel very big and intimidating to drive?

[laters]

Superb looking car. I currently have my uncle, in Florida, doing some research for me with the hope of importing a Charger to the UK at some point in the future.

[Stilltim]

culpz said:

Hmmm... It definitely looks aggressive and mean as most American muscle cars should do. But, i can't help think that it just looks too high up and SUV-like.

The car is 148cm tall. That's about 20cm shorter than Porsche's Cayenne SUV. It doesn't feel tall in person.... just proportionate to it's length and width.

Not a great pic, but this side view below should give you a much better idea of this car's dimensions. Note the Camry immediately behind it.

culpz said:

How does it feel driving it on UK roads? Does it feel very big and intimidating to drive?

I can't speak for UK roads, but driving this is definitely a different experience than driving a small car. With smaller cars, there is a tendency to feel like the vehicle is an extension of your own body. That's not what this feels like. With this, you are very much aware that you are strapped into a ferocious beast of a machine and despite being completely in control, you can't quite escspe the feeling that you are merely along for the ride. It glides along the pavement, but is capable of dragging you forward at terrifying speeds.... a bit like a roller coaster that.

That said, it is remarkably easy to drive this car tamely when desired. When you do that, it feels like a large luxury car with a sport (stiff) suspension.

As for intimidating... well... it's tough to get me annoyed enough to do this. But there's nothing quite so satisfying as roaring up behind a complete jerk in a 2.1 ton monster... after closing a 100 foot gap in about 2 seconds. People tend to jump out of their skins.

Edited by Stilltim on Wednesday 28th June 02:56

[Jimtasteek]

culpz said:

Hmmm... I'm not sure if i like it if i'm being honest. It definitely looks aggressive and mean as most American muscle cars should do. But, i can't help think that it just looks too high up and SUV-like. Probably something i need to see in the flesh to make proper judgement.

For me, i much prefer the Dodge Challenger. If i was going to have a LHD American car, then that would probably be it. It's certainly very awesome to have cars like this over here though. How does it feel driving it on UK roads? Does it feel very big and intimidating to drive?

Stilltim's response is pretty spot on. It is taller than you'd expect but it's as if it's a scaled-up version of a regular car - it's bigger all over so the proportions work.

As for use on a UK road it's surprisingly not as intimidating as you'd expect. You do need to get over the LHD thing (which I already did with my Mustang) and aside from that it's just fine. Yes it's big but it handles very well, has lots of grip and there's none of the wallowing suspension we all suspect US cars to have (in fact some may say it's a tad firm in that regard).

It can cruise very smoothly or obliterate your senses with speed and noise if you so desire. I tend to slow down to safely pass other cars when in country lanes but otherwise the compromises are surprisingly few - I consider it something of a performance bargain.

[anonymous-user]

"I've seen the trip computer get up to 24mpg but that was slipstreaming a lorry on a downhill gradient with my feet nowhere near the pedals. 18 is probably a more realistic number."

This car will surely be reading in US gallons, not UK gallons.

24 mpg US = 30 mpg UK

[BOR]

Matt Harper said:

I'm not so sure, I think your car looks awesome and would be my weapon of choice if I needed 4 doors. The rear facia treatment on the current Charger is absolutely gorgeous in my humble opinion.

Here's a similar view of my 392 Scat Pack

Can you explain the inner "headlamps" to us. It's quite a cool feature once it's been pointed out to you.