Back in October of 2022, Rob Daughaday drove his Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack into the 8-second range, making his modern muscle car the first Scat Pack model to run an 8-second quarter mile. When he became the first Scat Pack racer to run in the 8s, he did so with an 8.939 at 156.93 miles per hour, but since then, he has continued to reset his own record, dipping deeper into the 8s.

While racing at Darlington Dragway on December 3^rd, he ran his best E.T. yet, laying down an 8.615 at 148.96 miles per hour. Today, we bring you a look at how Daughaday transformed his Dodge Challenger from a 12-second stick-shift car to an 8-second quarter mile monster.

Rob Daughaday is the owner of Lucky 13 Tattoo in Mooresville, North Carolina and when he bought his 2016 Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack, he wasnt looking for a race car. He wanted a modern Hemi-powered muscle car with a manual transmission and in stock form, his Challenger Scat Pack suited him nicely for his daily drive. However, while at the drag strip with friends, Daughaday decided to make a pass down the track and “it spiraled out of control from there.”

Early on, Daughaday was racing his Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack in near-stock form, having simply added sticky rear tires on aftermarket wheels to help improve traction. However, even in near-stock form, he ran into repeated problems with the factory 6-speed transmission, so to improve longevity for racing, he switched to an Andrew’s A431 4-speed transmission.

At that point, he was running well into the 12-second range, but with the stronger manual transmission in place, he started breaking rear differentials. He addressed this by doing a full back-half on his car, removing the stock rear differential assembly and replacing it with a Dana 60 and ladder bars. Once the stronger differential was in place, Daughaday added a nitrous oxide system, allowing him to run consistently in the low-11s.

He was having fun and winning races with this combination in his Dodge Challenger R/T Scat Pack, but Rob Daughaday wanted to go faster – a whole lot faster – so he removed his bottle-fed 392 and the Andrews manual gearbox in favor of a supercharged 6.2 and an automatic transmission. That is the setup that is in the car today, which has gotten him well into the 8-second quarter mile range.

Under the hood of this Dodge Challenger is a 378-cubic inch/6.2-liter Gen III Hemi featuring a BGE block, a 2018 SRT Demon crankshaft, CP pistons that yield a 12:1 compression ratio, stock 392 cylinder heads, a G1Pro air/water intake manifold fitted with an Applied Nitrous Technologies fogger system and a ProCharger F1A94 supercharger with a 3.4-inch pulley that is delivering around 28 pounds of boost.

The engine is fed gobs of Ignite 90 racing ethanol by an Aeromotive Trifekta in-tank fuel pump system and ID1800 fuel injectors. The engine machining work was done by Gibbons Motorsports with tuning provided by Tim Barth of Barth Tuning, leading to a touch over 1,200 wheel horsepower on blower only. The nitrous system then piles on a few hundred more horsepower, creating the kind of thrust needed to run in the 8s.

All of that power is sent through a TH400 automatic transmission that was built by Jon Sipple of Sipple Speed and Performance. Sipple has built the automatic transmissions in many of the most powerful cars in the modern Mopar community, but he doesn’t just work on the ZF 8-speed units. Daughaday and Sipple are good friends, so Sipple built the transmission for this record-setting Scat Pack, in addition to helping with other aspects of the build along the way.

This car still utilizes the Dana 60 rear differential and ladder bars, along with QA1 double adjustable rear shocks. He runs Menscer Motorsports coilovers up front, allowing him to fine tune the front-to-rear weight transfer on launch. Finally, Daughaday’s Challenger puts power to the ground with a set of 29.5×10.5 Hoosier slicks wrapped around 15×10-inch Billet Specialties Comp5 double beadlock wheels.

As mentioned above, Rob Daughaday’s current personal best in the quarter mile – which is also the undisputed Scat Pack World Record – is a 8.61 at 148.96 miles per hour. That run was made on December 3^rd at Darlington Dragway at 5:18pm.

At that time, the air conditions were fairly poor, with an air temperature of 70 degrees and 87% humidity leading to a density altitude of 1,900 feet. Considering the fact that most records are run in negative DA, Daughaday’s 8.61 at +1,900 is even more impressive. Best of all, Rob Daughaday plans to continue pushing his Dodge Challenger even harder, with the ultimate goal of being the first Scat Pack owner to run in the 7s.

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