Sean Ryan’s muscle-car dreams finally came true with this hot rodded Dodge Charger
The performance outlook was somewhat bleak for young men and women coming of age in the mid- to late-1970s. From the beginning of the decade, virtually every bit of the time, energy, and creative thinking of the engineers and designers at all of the car companies was devoted to addressing increasingly stringent emissions, fuel consumption, safety, and noise mandates from the federal government. Nearly every one of the new laws and all of the regulations written to implement them diminished performance, either by adding mass, reducing power, or doing both.
This is why native Californian Sean Ryan, along with nearly everyone else who began driving in the late-1970s, found muscle cars from the 1960s far more appealing than anything they could buy new. Ryan’s appreciation for classic muscle cars was deepened as he learned more about them while working at various hot rod shops in Southern California. Like so many others with a love for hot cars from a bygone era, however, Ryan never dreamed that exponentially advancing technology would ultimately crush performance-robbing government requirements, yielding a second—even brighter—golden age of muscle cars that we’re enjoying today.
The return to performance that began in the 1980s and grew stronger as time marched on certainly caught Ryan’s attention, but work demands and the other typical obligations that come with adulthood took precedence over his love for fast and fun cars. Following retirement from a successful career in investing, Ryan again turned his attention to the go-fast hobby. After considering a wide variety of available cars, he bought a 2014 Dodge Charger SRT8. It offered the visceral feel of a classic, high-output muscle car from the 1960s, without any of the sacrifices vintage iron demanded.
Ryan loved the appearance of his Charger as delivered, but made a couple of changes to suit his taste. For a touch of modern, JS Wraps added a carbon-fiber wrap to the hood, trunk, rockers, rear wing, and body-side cove outline. And for a tip of the hat to Ryan’s appreciation for the first golden age of muscle cars, he had Phil Stadden add some old-school, handpainted pinstriping.
After enjoying his visually modified but otherwise stock Charger for a few years, Ryan’s old hot rodding instinct kicked in, and he decided to investigate ways to increase its all-around performance envelope without sacrificing the comfort and reliability he had gotten used to. To assist with that process, he enlisted the help of Chris Braun at Brauns Motorsports, a Lomita, California, shop that’s been building extremely high-quality hot rods and restoring classic muscle cars for more than 30 years.
After speaking with Ryan and developing an understanding of what he wanted, Braun formulated a plan of attack. He suggested the installation of an Edelbrock supercharger, which would add at least 100 hp and 100 lb-ft of torque while simultaneously delivering a smooth, quiet idle and instant throttle response. Besides being 100-percent smog-legal in California, the Edelbrock system has the added benefit of requiring no internal engine modifications, making it a cost-effective way to dramatically increase power output.
We’ve all heard the old adage about underpromising and overdelivering, and that’s exactly what Braun did with Ryan’s engine modifications. The hot rod wizard’s estimate for the increases in the engine’s output was very conservative, as evidenced by before-and-after dyno runs. In stock trim, running on 91-octane gas, the engine delivered 391.3 hp at 5,500 rpm and 433.0 lb-ft of torque at 3,800 rpm to the rear wheels. With the Edelbrock E-Force supercharger system delivering 8 psi of boost, and the same 91 octane fuel, those numbers improved to 567.6 hp at 6,150 rpm and 561.9 lb-ft of torque at 4,450 rpm.
In keeping with Ryan’s request to enhance the Charger’s total performance envelope, Braun next addressed the braking system. To improve stopping power, the techs at Brauns Motorsports installed a Brembo brake package with six-piston front and four-piston rear calipers clamping down on drilled, two-piece rotors. Up front, the disks are sized at 380×34 mm and at the rear they measure 380×28 mm.
The Charger’s structure, as produced by FCA’s Brampton, Ontario, assembly plant, is rock solid, but Braun believes there’s always room for improvement. To cut down on chassis flex, Brauns Motorsports fabricated and installed a six-point rollcage that fits perfectly and does its job without causing any inconveniences for the driver or passengers. To give the bars a polished look, Ryan had Brauns Motorsports get them plated with a copper/bronze finish. While they were designing and installing the rollcage, the fabricators also sectioned down the floorpan’s X-bracing, which lowered the front seats and gave an impressive 4 inches of increased headroom.
The next area the shop looked at was the Charger’s suspension. “We carefully analyzed the tire-wear patterns and put the car on an alignment machine,” Braun explains. “The camber readings were 1-3/4 degrees negative in the front and 1-1/2 degrees negative in the rear, which is great for racing, but not so good for tire wear.”
To give a much-better-than-stock range of alignment adjustment and improve overall handling, Braun recommended replacing some of the original chassis components while retaining the factory three-way-adjustable Bilstein active suspension. At both ends, the Brauns Motorsports techs installed Hotchkis sway bars with heim-jointed Speedlogix adjustable links. In the front, they also replaced the stock upper control arms with Speedlogix adjustable T6061 billet-aluminum arms. Besides tightening up the steering feel and wheel geometry at higher loads by replacing the relatively soft factory bushings with firmer ones (and saving 1.25 pounds of weight per arm), these have a tab-adjustment system that offers a greater range of settings than the factory arms, allowing for the reduction or even elimination of negative camber, if desired.
To substantially reduce compliance inherent in the factory setup, eliminate mass, and reduce wheelhop during hard launches, Brauns Motorsports replaced several rear-suspension components with new parts sourced from Modern Muscle Xtreme. New billet upper and lower control arms, as well as new camber rods and toe rods made from heavy-duty DOM steel tubing, TIG-welded chromoly tube adapters with a heavy-duty center adjuster, and zinc-plated, heat-treated chromoly, and Teflon-lined rod ends took the place of the car’s original factory parts.
Ryan adores the added performance all of the engine, brake system, and chassis upgrades have delivered and thoroughly enjoys driving his modern muscle car every day. Looking ahead, he’s going to have Brauns Motorsports install five-point front seatbelts and will then test the car’s limits on the road course at Willow Springs International Raceway in Southern California.
Fast Facts
2014 Dodge Charger SRT8
Car Owner: Sean Ryan• Palos Verdes, CA
ENGINE
Type: SRT 6.4L HEMI V8
Bore x stroke: 4.09-inch (bore) x 3.72-inch (stroke)
Block: Stock deep-skirt, 90-degree V8 iron block with cross-bolted main bearing caps
Rotating assembly: Original micro-alloy, forged-steel, fillet-rolled crankshaft with induction-hardened bearing surfaces, powder-forged connecting rods, and cast eutectic alloy pistons with a hard anodize on the top ring land and floating pins
Compression: 10.9:1
Cylinder heads: Stock cylinder heads cast from A319 aluminum alloy with chemical composition modifications to improve high-strength fatigue characteristics, 73.4cc combustion chambers
Camshaft: Stock hollow billet-steel camshaft, intake: 0.577-inch lift, 286 degrees duration; exhaust: 0.537-inch lift, 288 degrees duration
Valvetrain: Pushrod-operated overhead valves, 16 valves with sodium-filled 42mm exhaust valves and hollow-stem 54.3mm intake valves, 16 conventional hydraulic lifters, all with roller tips, beehive-type valvesprings
Induction: Edelbrock E-Force supercharger system
Fuel: Edelbrock 46-pound injectors
Oiling system: Stock high-flow gerotor oil pump and cast-aluminum 7-quart-capacity oil pan
Exhaust: Stock stainless-steel headers, Borla stainless-steel cat-back exhaust system
Ignition: SRT engine-management system, two spark plugs per cylinder
Cooling: SRT aluminum performance radiator, 14-quart capacity
Engine built by: Chrysler’s Saltillo, Mexico, assembly plant
DRIVETRAIN
Transmission: Stock W5A580 five-speed automatic transmission
Torque converter: Stock
Shifter: Stock
Driveshaft: Stock
Axles: Stock
Rear end: Stock 3.06:1 limited-slip differential
CHASSIS
Front Suspension: Speedlogix billet-aluminum upper A-arms, stock gas-charged ADS Bilstein three-way-adjustable coilover shock absorbers, Speedlogix adjustable stabilizer bar links and Hotchkis sway-bar package with 1.5-inch hollow bar, poly bushings, lateral and diagonal lower links, SRT-tuned three-mode adaptive damping system: Street mode = sporty, compliant ride; Sport mode = firm, improved handling; Track mode = firmest, maximum handling
Rear suspension: Modern Muscle Xtreme upper trailing arms with camber adjustment, Modern Muscle Xtreme lower trailing arms, Modern Muscle Xtreme adjustable toe rods, Hotchkis .75-inch solid stabilizer bar with poly bushings and Speedlogix adjustable links, stock gas-charged ADS Bilstein three-way-adjustable coilover shock absorbers and isolated suspension cradle
Steering: Stock rack and pinion with hydraulic power assist and fixed displacement hydraulic power-steering pump
Front brakes: Brembo six-piston fixed mono-block aluminum calipers, two-piece 380x34mm drilled rotors
Rear brakes: Brembo four-piston mono-block aluminum calipers, two-piece 380x28mm drilled rotors
WHEELS & TIRES
Wheels: Stock cast-aluminum wheels sized at 20×9 inches in the front and 20×9 inches in the rear
Tires: Goodyear Eagle F1 275/40ZR20 front and rear
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