DGatzby
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- 2019 Dodge Challenger Redeye WB
I want to start a thread on this, because? This upgrade is too easy, probably will not and cannot void any warranties unless we overwork the shocks, which don't seem very likely. Plus, we need more automotive threads on here to demonstrate this group really knows cars. So here is some great info. I would recommend anyone on the fence about one of these, just go take the plunge, it works great IMO.
My impressions and feedback; some review from the street and my first day on a closed course track with it.
Since it was installed if anybody has been keeping up with my posts, it is absolutely noticeable that something very different was making a positive difference with my suspension.
1. The front of the car becomes nearly resistant to any nose dives when the brake is applied.
2. The ride of the car with neutral handling inputs (straight down the highway, or smooth curves for enjoyment) displays near comfortable riding qualities that remind me of the ride on our 2018 Grand Cherokee Summit.
3. When challenged, on the street (Street Mode), the car will begin to resist sway and become more "stiff" on rebound and compression. In other words, even after selecting the default street mode for suspension, and enjoying the great ride, if an emergency hits or if a person becomes a bit aggressive on turns or exiting or entering a freeway, the module will use the tables embedded within its program and work to make the suspension more like what would formally happen if a person would quickly switch to Track Mode.
4. It will absolutely give most people a case of "NO WAY", when riding around some of the local roundabouts with me.
5. My buddy rode along while I engaged as smooth as I could a new section of highway with curves near our home. He happened to look at the speedometer, and about had a shit fit! He said he never would have guessed we were at the speed he saw.
I have not got specific on the track experiences of last week on line because the camera failed, therefore there is not a lot of good stuff to "look" at. However, I have spent some time researching the lap times and their sector times from the Donnybrook BIR configuration that I have run 100's of times. The good news is very specific. The car definitely turned better lap times! Sort of. The problem at BIR is btw turns 8-10 we have a quickly and severely deteriorating road surface. I am losing two to perhaps three seconds in that section, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything we can correct for. The bumps and ruts are getting too large. In the past I hit 130 mph max, with a Hellcat (the Redeye would be faster), but even if I did not care about losing control and death and pressed it, the car is pulling power through there because of wheel slip, and that is above even 75 MPH! We are hitting maybe 100 on the best laps in there now, and cannot get that sector any better than about 2.5 seconds short of some of the best previous hero runs. So this car is putting down some good laps now.
Specific track comments. These are not new or novel, because others have comments on the same and/or we have seen descriptions of the product that promise this. I can confirm….
1. Run over the rumble strips on the edge of the track. Before-the shocks and chassis would darn near vibrate off the road; after - the shocks absorb the energy, and we can barely feel the vibrations even in the steering. That is a big one, we need all the track we can get with these very heavy machines. While others can cheat the line with the lighter cars, we need to take advantage of the whole track with every turn to gain some advantage.
2. Cornering - much more controllable IMO. High speed and I mean high speed stability and the resultant feedback to the driver is much better (120-167 MPH at BIR).
3. The simple observed wear on the brake pads seemed to improve. Could that be the better stability from the controller on braking? Or perhaps better braking performance period and then the effect was less pad wear because to get the same perceived stopping distance, my brakes did not work as hard? Whatever the reason, I'll take better laps without as much wear on the consumables! Same for the tires. With the controller installed and the alignment correct up front, this is the first time EVER we did not observe excessive stupid outside shoulder wear on the tires. That completely supports the contention that excessive tire shoulder wear is caused by a toe misalignment and not by camber.
Okay, what did the numbers show?
Vast improvement on a 60-130 elapsed time up the straight. I was even able to post my 6.6 sec calculated time on the 60-130 thread for the first time, without being embarrassed. The Redeye is performing as expected!
An improvement of 5 mph on top speed from about a max 162 mph (707 HP Hellcat) to 167 mph (Redeye).
A solid consistent improvement on the sector time of the highest speed up the straight and including turn 1 & 2. Best sector times average a noticeable difference. The best sector time was more than one second better in the 25-26 second range than that absolute best "hero" time the 2015 set only one time, the best ten are shown below.
In the high speed turn sector to demonstrate the absolute stability perceived and to show real results, the Redeye has captured seven of ten top spots. This is the sector including turn 1, 2 and entering #3. Clearly the fastest sector on any road course in the USA because of the long radius turns and #1's bank. Notice the RE did do one hero lap last year (before controller), but the laps generally last week smoked it and the Hellcat! That '15 Hellcat was lowered. I can tell everyone, if your rear axles can support it, lowering the car most definitely gives an advantage. I just will not lower this unit because of the horrible problems experienced on my previous car up at BIR.
Sorry, a nice table was automatically formatted on a cut/paste in the "other" place. Since it would not do it here, I inserted a picture of the data as best I could.
All the best laps/times shown above were done with 20" wheels 12" wide made by Triumph Performance. 345/30 Cup 2 rear tires, 325/30 Cup 2 front tires. Cold pressures 30 psi rear, 32 psi front. Air temperature was 50 degrees and absolutely no sun or warm on the track all day. I fully expect to drill these times along with the other sector times in the competition course corners on a warmer day. I have the other comp course sector times, but have not looked through them yet. I did indeed need to hold back on power everywhere due to slippage because the rubber was generally cold. More than once I felt slight slippage through #2, and that is not fun at over 100 mph and where I have seen more than one major spin, which has never resulted in anything but complete disaster. So it has more to give on these corners on a warmer day. Once when I did think I ran a great lap time and they were sticking? I spun the car back on our "throw-away" turn #4. Not fun. Recovered on track, but did not attempt to get that aggressive for the remainder of the day.
Brakes: Rotors Demon Performance (only the name) made by Gyrodisc on all four corners. Hawk DTC-70 pads on all four corners. New fronts to start the day, used about 50%, rears survive another day. I believe they have about four days on them now. I will be taking two additional sets of fronts, one other used set of fronts and one new set of rears to RA this weekend.
Other settings to share with everyone who tracks their cars. I work my own alignment and have tweaked and tweaked. I believe this is close to what works best. Rear camber right and left; zero or nearly zero as possible. Rear toe; 1/8" toe in. AAD adj control arms installed at all points. Read that and weep. Camber with wide tires have previously caused big time slippage for me. This setting gets that rubber on the road. Very similar to my drag racing friends settings, and we know for darn sure that works well.
Front camber right and left -2 degrees. Front total toe; only about 1/8' toe-in (NOT MORE IN EITHER DIRECTION). Caster as per spec. AAD adjustable control arms and toe reset necessary when changing the camber tabs (VERY IMPORTANT OR IT WILL MOVE THE TOE WAY OUT OF SPECIFICATIONS).
Front springs are KW adjustable with height set to OEM spec. Rear springs OEM.
I drive in 100% Track Mode. Sometimes in certain places I may intervene with a paddle shifter to hold a gear, but otherwise, that thing is a lot smarter than I can ever be. Those downshifts not only sound great but provide additional assistance to slowing the beast by enhancing the forces on the rear as the engine helps braking.
I am heading to Road America for two days of HDPE laps this weekend. Saturday will be the day the RE and its chiller could do good. Temps are expected in the mid-80's with partly cloudy sky. No excuse, the Cup 2's should stick, the car is dialed in, working great. It will be on the driver to make it happen. If it gets wet, my spare set of wheels and tires are special! I have mounted two PS 305/35's (formerly my street fronts, but got deleted for two 325/30's due to rubbing from a marginal fit of the custom wheels) for the front set, and have two of the brand new original Pirelli tires for the rear. Those are on the OEM wheels and will serve as a very worthy spare set to bolt up quick if things get wet, so I can still have some fun. I have experience and have received great instruction running on a course in the wet, and will look forward to it if it gets wet later Saturday or on Sunday sometime. I have both lap times and movies from last year at RA to compare with this. I expect that again, I will smoke the times of last season based on how this thing feels right now. Keep your fingers crossed the GoPro has come back to life, and will shoot video for us to watch. I am very sorry, it had a complete failure at BIR even if it was chirping away like everything was synchronizing fine with Harry's Lap Timer.
On Harry's...it worked so much better. I had one little switch on that was causing it to start laps automatically in the pits. It was driving me nuts and almost cost me a lot of money, because I was looking to spend a lot on one of those systems from AIM or Garmin. If your App is triggering at the wrong times, like even not on the track; go to the Advanced Settings/Trigger Detection and turn OFF "ALLOW LOW SPEEDS". Then you must cross the start-finish line at high speed ON THE TRACK for it to trigger to life in an automatic mode, which is what we want.
My impressions and feedback; some review from the street and my first day on a closed course track with it.
Since it was installed if anybody has been keeping up with my posts, it is absolutely noticeable that something very different was making a positive difference with my suspension.
1. The front of the car becomes nearly resistant to any nose dives when the brake is applied.
2. The ride of the car with neutral handling inputs (straight down the highway, or smooth curves for enjoyment) displays near comfortable riding qualities that remind me of the ride on our 2018 Grand Cherokee Summit.
3. When challenged, on the street (Street Mode), the car will begin to resist sway and become more "stiff" on rebound and compression. In other words, even after selecting the default street mode for suspension, and enjoying the great ride, if an emergency hits or if a person becomes a bit aggressive on turns or exiting or entering a freeway, the module will use the tables embedded within its program and work to make the suspension more like what would formally happen if a person would quickly switch to Track Mode.
4. It will absolutely give most people a case of "NO WAY", when riding around some of the local roundabouts with me.
5. My buddy rode along while I engaged as smooth as I could a new section of highway with curves near our home. He happened to look at the speedometer, and about had a shit fit! He said he never would have guessed we were at the speed he saw.
I have not got specific on the track experiences of last week on line because the camera failed, therefore there is not a lot of good stuff to "look" at. However, I have spent some time researching the lap times and their sector times from the Donnybrook BIR configuration that I have run 100's of times. The good news is very specific. The car definitely turned better lap times! Sort of. The problem at BIR is btw turns 8-10 we have a quickly and severely deteriorating road surface. I am losing two to perhaps three seconds in that section, and it has absolutely nothing to do with anything we can correct for. The bumps and ruts are getting too large. In the past I hit 130 mph max, with a Hellcat (the Redeye would be faster), but even if I did not care about losing control and death and pressed it, the car is pulling power through there because of wheel slip, and that is above even 75 MPH! We are hitting maybe 100 on the best laps in there now, and cannot get that sector any better than about 2.5 seconds short of some of the best previous hero runs. So this car is putting down some good laps now.
Specific track comments. These are not new or novel, because others have comments on the same and/or we have seen descriptions of the product that promise this. I can confirm….
1. Run over the rumble strips on the edge of the track. Before-the shocks and chassis would darn near vibrate off the road; after - the shocks absorb the energy, and we can barely feel the vibrations even in the steering. That is a big one, we need all the track we can get with these very heavy machines. While others can cheat the line with the lighter cars, we need to take advantage of the whole track with every turn to gain some advantage.
2. Cornering - much more controllable IMO. High speed and I mean high speed stability and the resultant feedback to the driver is much better (120-167 MPH at BIR).
3. The simple observed wear on the brake pads seemed to improve. Could that be the better stability from the controller on braking? Or perhaps better braking performance period and then the effect was less pad wear because to get the same perceived stopping distance, my brakes did not work as hard? Whatever the reason, I'll take better laps without as much wear on the consumables! Same for the tires. With the controller installed and the alignment correct up front, this is the first time EVER we did not observe excessive stupid outside shoulder wear on the tires. That completely supports the contention that excessive tire shoulder wear is caused by a toe misalignment and not by camber.
Okay, what did the numbers show?
Vast improvement on a 60-130 elapsed time up the straight. I was even able to post my 6.6 sec calculated time on the 60-130 thread for the first time, without being embarrassed. The Redeye is performing as expected!
An improvement of 5 mph on top speed from about a max 162 mph (707 HP Hellcat) to 167 mph (Redeye).
A solid consistent improvement on the sector time of the highest speed up the straight and including turn 1 & 2. Best sector times average a noticeable difference. The best sector time was more than one second better in the 25-26 second range than that absolute best "hero" time the 2015 set only one time, the best ten are shown below.
In the high speed turn sector to demonstrate the absolute stability perceived and to show real results, the Redeye has captured seven of ten top spots. This is the sector including turn 1, 2 and entering #3. Clearly the fastest sector on any road course in the USA because of the long radius turns and #1's bank. Notice the RE did do one hero lap last year (before controller), but the laps generally last week smoked it and the Hellcat! That '15 Hellcat was lowered. I can tell everyone, if your rear axles can support it, lowering the car most definitely gives an advantage. I just will not lower this unit because of the horrible problems experienced on my previous car up at BIR.
Sorry, a nice table was automatically formatted on a cut/paste in the "other" place. Since it would not do it here, I inserted a picture of the data as best I could.

All the best laps/times shown above were done with 20" wheels 12" wide made by Triumph Performance. 345/30 Cup 2 rear tires, 325/30 Cup 2 front tires. Cold pressures 30 psi rear, 32 psi front. Air temperature was 50 degrees and absolutely no sun or warm on the track all day. I fully expect to drill these times along with the other sector times in the competition course corners on a warmer day. I have the other comp course sector times, but have not looked through them yet. I did indeed need to hold back on power everywhere due to slippage because the rubber was generally cold. More than once I felt slight slippage through #2, and that is not fun at over 100 mph and where I have seen more than one major spin, which has never resulted in anything but complete disaster. So it has more to give on these corners on a warmer day. Once when I did think I ran a great lap time and they were sticking? I spun the car back on our "throw-away" turn #4. Not fun. Recovered on track, but did not attempt to get that aggressive for the remainder of the day.
Brakes: Rotors Demon Performance (only the name) made by Gyrodisc on all four corners. Hawk DTC-70 pads on all four corners. New fronts to start the day, used about 50%, rears survive another day. I believe they have about four days on them now. I will be taking two additional sets of fronts, one other used set of fronts and one new set of rears to RA this weekend.
Other settings to share with everyone who tracks their cars. I work my own alignment and have tweaked and tweaked. I believe this is close to what works best. Rear camber right and left; zero or nearly zero as possible. Rear toe; 1/8" toe in. AAD adj control arms installed at all points. Read that and weep. Camber with wide tires have previously caused big time slippage for me. This setting gets that rubber on the road. Very similar to my drag racing friends settings, and we know for darn sure that works well.
Front camber right and left -2 degrees. Front total toe; only about 1/8' toe-in (NOT MORE IN EITHER DIRECTION). Caster as per spec. AAD adjustable control arms and toe reset necessary when changing the camber tabs (VERY IMPORTANT OR IT WILL MOVE THE TOE WAY OUT OF SPECIFICATIONS).
Front springs are KW adjustable with height set to OEM spec. Rear springs OEM.
I drive in 100% Track Mode. Sometimes in certain places I may intervene with a paddle shifter to hold a gear, but otherwise, that thing is a lot smarter than I can ever be. Those downshifts not only sound great but provide additional assistance to slowing the beast by enhancing the forces on the rear as the engine helps braking.
I am heading to Road America for two days of HDPE laps this weekend. Saturday will be the day the RE and its chiller could do good. Temps are expected in the mid-80's with partly cloudy sky. No excuse, the Cup 2's should stick, the car is dialed in, working great. It will be on the driver to make it happen. If it gets wet, my spare set of wheels and tires are special! I have mounted two PS 305/35's (formerly my street fronts, but got deleted for two 325/30's due to rubbing from a marginal fit of the custom wheels) for the front set, and have two of the brand new original Pirelli tires for the rear. Those are on the OEM wheels and will serve as a very worthy spare set to bolt up quick if things get wet, so I can still have some fun. I have experience and have received great instruction running on a course in the wet, and will look forward to it if it gets wet later Saturday or on Sunday sometime. I have both lap times and movies from last year at RA to compare with this. I expect that again, I will smoke the times of last season based on how this thing feels right now. Keep your fingers crossed the GoPro has come back to life, and will shoot video for us to watch. I am very sorry, it had a complete failure at BIR even if it was chirping away like everything was synchronizing fine with Harry's Lap Timer.
On Harry's...it worked so much better. I had one little switch on that was causing it to start laps automatically in the pits. It was driving me nuts and almost cost me a lot of money, because I was looking to spend a lot on one of those systems from AIM or Garmin. If your App is triggering at the wrong times, like even not on the track; go to the Advanced Settings/Trigger Detection and turn OFF "ALLOW LOW SPEEDS". Then you must cross the start-finish line at high speed ON THE TRACK for it to trigger to life in an automatic mode, which is what we want.
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