If you’ll recall from the last time Angry Grandpa (our 2006 Chrysler 300C) was on the quarter-mile at Beech Bend Raceway Park, we had been fighting throughout all of ChallengerFest 7 trying to achieve a goal: either turn a quarter-mile time under 13.99 or trap the quarter at over 100 miles an hour. Neither goal is too unreasonable or unrealistic for the big gold brick of a sedan, and we even had weather on our side, with a density altitude reading of -1,387 feet. We got so damn close, too, with a [email protected] run, but I’m a perfectionist: that’s not under 13.99, and that’s not over 100 miles an hour. We were pleased with the gains we had made by removing a lot of dead weight, but in the end we found the limit of what the car was going to do stock. If Grandpa was going to move his big gold backside any quicker, modifications were going to have to happen.

And they have happened. Thanks to our friends at Holley, we recently got the Chrysler two new upgrades: MSD coils to replace the 117,000+ mile old stockers, and a Trinity T1000 tuning system from Diablosport to tweak the PCM a little bit.

First up was the Diablosport Trinity T1000 tuning unit. This plug-and-play system uses the OBD II port to access the PCM and from there, you can install tunes (both custom and the pre-installed standard versions), monitor systems (pictured), play with individual items like shift points and traction control…yes, it fully defeats it and yes, we will give that a shot soon enough!…and more. We’ve messed around with it and have ran two of the stock tunes: an Economy tune and the one we’ve had on for about a month now, a 91 Octane Cold Air Induction tune meant for a mildly modified car like Angry Grandpa.

The MSD Blaster coils (p/n 82558) are a direct swap-over for the standard 5.7 Hemi units that had been on the car since day zero. These are easy enough to do: two 10mm bolts and one electrical connector per coil pack, and all you have to do for installation is make sure that the boots slide over the two spark plugs. Easy. We have already seen some negative leanings toward these coils from readers, so we will be watching to see how they perform, but when paired off with the Trinity’s 91 Octane Cold-Air Induction tune, the 5.7 woke right up, especially down low.

With the tuner and coils in place, we had noticed that the Chrysler was performing better in a lot of regards. During a trip to Southern Illinois, we tried out the Economy tune one direction and were pleasantly surprised to see a 25% reduction of fuel used. Strangely enough, we ran the 91 Octane tune on the way back and saw even more of an increase in MPG, and that was with the stock coils still in place! We’re happy that the fuel economy kicked up, but let’s be quite honest: there were other matters to deal with that didn’t involve fuel economy in the least. We still had a goal looming, and we had an open track day. So, we did what any sane human who wants to run a Saturday night local night does…

…we gutted the bastard. This was the same emergency diet that we threw Gramps on during ChallengerFest 7, and was going to be the best way of achieving our goals. We splashed some fuel into the tank and headed out to Beech Bend.

So, how’d we do? There’s two ways to look at this, but let’s start with the meat and potatoes: the goal has not been met. The 300C’s best run of the night was a [email protected]. Yes, we lost ground, and yes, that sucks. But there’s one huge explanation for that: air temperature and density altitude. Remember, at ChallengerFest 7, the temperatures were cool and the air density was in the negative thousand foot area…that’s beyond ideal, that’s almost miraculous. Compare it to when we ran Grandpa on Saturday night: Early on the DA was at 2,860 ft. at 87 degrees Fahrenheit, and by the evening, when I ran the fastest, the DA was at 2,384 at 79 degrees Fahrenheit. The difference there is huge…had everything been identical, the Chrysler would have been in the 13s and well over 100 mph.

The car’s behavior on the track backs up that speculation. Normal launching procedure for the Chrysler is to brake-torque it to about 2400 RPM before launching full-throttle…this allows the car to roll forward a few feet before the engine picks up and starts climbing the tach, and kept wheelspin to a quick scratch. We tried that technique twice and were rewarded with the kind of wheelspin that we normally see on rainy roads…the Chrysler would haze the tires to just past the 60′ mark, shifting through second before finally hooking up. We’ve never had to soften our launch before at any track we’ve taken it to, so there is certainly a gain in the power curve, but until the car is strapped to a dyno or we find better air to race in, we can only tell you what happened.

Unless we do something major to Grandpa prior to, we are going to wait until the temperatures drop back down into at least the low 70s-upper 60s range before we hit the track again. With nothing else changing, we bet that 13s are in the brick. Just how far into the 13s it’ll go is to be determined.