Rob Dahm’s 2026 Dodge Charger Makes More Power Than Its Transmission Can Handle
Rob Dahm is the guy who builds wild rotary cars, so handing him a 2026 Dodge Charger Scat Pack was always going to get weird. He bolted on a big turbo, hauled it to the dyno and started turning the wick up. The engine took everything he threw at it. The rest of the car? Not so much.
How Rob Dahm’s Charger Made Nearly 1,000 Horsepower
This is Dahm’s Direct Connection Grudge Match car, built from the same 550 hp Scat Pack Dodge handed all eight competitors. His runs a 7275 turbocharger, E85, nitrous, an upgraded fuel system and aftermarket engine management. The engine internals? Untouched. Stock block, stock drivetrain. From the factory, the twin-turbo 3.0-liter Hurricane inline-six makes 550 hp and 531 lb-ft. Dahm’s best run made roughly 970 hp and around 860 lb-ft. At the wheels.
Getting there was messy. With the all-wheel-drive Charger locked in rear-wheel-drive mode, the rollers spun up so easily the turbo couldn’t build the boost Dahm sees on the street. The exhaust was choking it too, and it still made 857 wheel horsepower with the full system on. Oh, and early on, Dahm forgot to reconnect the surge tank line to the fuel rail. The stock fuel system carried it to its limit, and his Haltech pulled boost when fuel pressure dropped. Saved by his own failsafe.
So he unbolted everything past the downpipe and sent it again. 920 whp, with barely any nitrous involved. And here’s the part that gets us. The car’s electronics didn’t like the boost and closed the throttle to about 40% partway through the pull. That 920 came with the throttle body mostly shut.
The Charger’s Eight-Speed Automatic Can’t Keep Up
Turns out the nitrous bottle had been empty, until one of the shop guys dug up an old one that still had some in it. With fresh nitrous and the throttle cut gone, Dahm went for it. That’s where the big numbers came from, and where the transmission started tapping out. Even in manual mode, it kept shifting on its own. Dahm reckons it was detecting slip with torque closing in on 1,000 lb-ft.
He thinks there’s 1,100 hp in there with fewer restrictions and a higher rev limit. That’s his math, not a dyno sheet. The session never got there, because the gearbox wouldn’t let him find out. Still, nothing let go. Dahm drove it onto the trailer afterward, and the full exhaust is coming off for the next video. Nearly 1,000 wheel horsepower on factory engine internals, and the weak link is a transmission trying to keep itself alive. Hard to be mad at that.
Source: Rob Dahm YouTube
Related posts
Latest Post
No Comments