Episode #3: The Supra or the Charger: Which one really won the race?

[Music] Craig Lieberman catching you on this rainy Saturday first I'll do the obligatory plug in my book it is called crashing cars it's available on amazon.com covers the whole story of how I got involved in the movie tell stories about how we built the cars in the first two movies and how everything came together my role a little bit about the actors and all the behind-the-scenes stuffs the stuff that you don't read or don't actually see on the Internet so let's jump into today's topic today's topic should be pretty good and I know it is one of interest to most of you and that is the age-old question which was faster of Supra or the charger so it's important to kind of qualify that question and here's how we're going to qualify we're basically talking about the hero charger as presented on screen versus the Supra as presented on screen and there are distinct differences between both of the cars as we all know one claims to be a 526 Hemi that's supercharged on alcohol and making about 900 horsepower that is the claim from the engine builder the engine builder was Chuck Taylor racing engines if you go on the Chuck Taylors antiquated website you'll see he does a much better of building motors than he does website but there's a problem with that if people have done any research at all they know to 5:26 never came in the dodge charger aha you have to do a little more research a bit a 526 is basically a 426 that has been bored and stroked you engine builders and racecar fans know what boring and stroking means for those of you who don't let me walk you through it boring and stroking basically means increasing the engines displacement by making the cylinders hold more volume Boren refers to making the cylinder holes larger stroking means increasing the length of the stroke to increase the cylinder volume so that's how you take a 426 and turn it into a 526 and that's what Chuck Taylor claims to have done and there's no reason to doubt him it's a pretty common practice when using alcohol and a supercharger he claims that the motor made 900 horsepower since Chuck is a legitimate expert in the field we have no reason to doubt him his word aha but there's another problem that actual motor that you saw in pictures and the static shot war Dom is in the garage with Paul with Brian you'll notice that attacks I as a fan belt going around the supercharger superchargers have fan belts right they have a belt that goes around it's the drive mechanism but if you notice in every single moving shot of the car of the Dodge Charger you'll never see the belt that is because the superchargers on all the other cars were not there they were fake what we did is vacuform mold it a fake supercharger and attached it to the top of the hood with a big bug catcher air intake on top and that's how all the other cars were built so none of them had real superchargers not one of them had a real suit for the hero car essentially what happened is we bought the car borrowed the car from Universal who had already had the car built I assume a picture car warehouse built the car somebody like ray Claridge or Ted Moser or any of those other famous picture car builders who working around Hollywood n't have done so for decades so we got the car we got this engine from Chuck Taylor racing engines we put it inside the car we did the the camera shots around the front of the car with with DOM and Brian as they were talking about the cars horsepower and torque and all that sort of thing and that was it as soon as that was done that Angela's pulled out and shipped right back to Chuck Taylor racing engine so the car never ran with that engine in it so then we are forced to take a look at what would have happened if those two cars had actually raised in that configuration let's take a look at some of the stats to figure out which one would have won so the hero charger who claimed to be 900 horsepower on alcohol using that 526 Hemi assuming the car weighed about 3,600 pounds assuming the car used a standard three-speed automatic transmission that was presumably presumably built to handle the power we do know that the car that we had had a drag race suspension and drag slicks for those of you who don't know drag slicks are an important component one drag race and when you have a sticky tire you're able to accelerate when you you're not moving forward you're standing still so you have to have stinky tires this is why drag racers use slicks or a low tread wear tie the lower the tread wear the stickier the tire and that was something that the charger had the super on the other hand was another story it had a stock block 2jz a t6 t6 turbo which is rated for about 700 rear-wheel horsepower this particular car in this condition of tuned this type of tuned using the devices we had back then which included things like the HKS PPC and GCC those were really band-aid solutions but the car would reasonably make 675 horsepower my dyno on it was about 569 or 574 horsepower depending on which diner you believe within 150 west shot of nitrous you could say that the car made realistically maybe 750 in the best-case scenario but the car weights 3,900 pounds and had roadrace suspension it also had Yokohama 285 3019 tires and anyone who knows anything about cars knows that a street tire is not a good drag race tire in most considerations certainly not a low profile 19 inch tire with a 240 tread wear that was not an optimum setup yet that's the way the car was equipped in that scene so what would have happened if you go online you can look up an ET calculator a elapsed time calculator you can plug in the data and get a reasonable estimation of what your car would run they're not a hundred percent accurate but they're pretty darn close so let's take a look at those stats assuming the hero charger weighed 3600 pounds and made 900 horsepower it's estimated ET would have been somewhere in the range of nine point two two seconds at 144 miles per hour and that's not outlandish that's a very reasonable expectation we'll bump it down and say well maybe the guy's not a great driver but forget all that an ideal scenario the car is still a mid nine second card 140 miles an hour let's take a look conversely at the Supra the super weight thirty-nine hundred and fifty pounds had a full roll cage in an audio/video system and had heavy street seats and all that other stuff while the whole charge of course was stripped out nevertheless at weight 3950 best case scenario made 675 without nitrous and 800 with nitrous plug that into an ET calculator you come up with nine point seven at 137 miles an hour case closed super loses end of story probably not what you want to be here but it gets even worse the fact of the matter is back in that time in the early 2000s super tuners like Ryan wound and other experts who had T 66s on their supers we're not getting anywhere near that time they were running about 10 60 s at 136 miles an hour in fact if you do a youtube search for Ryan Moon t66 Supra you'll find a video of that actual run so it would just wasn't a good match up a car on street tires like my Supra would not really be able to run what that charger in any scenario even with slicks that have been a tough race without proper tuning and bigger fuel system in a big way you'd have to have you know bigger pumps bigger injectors and you know standalone system and it'd be a closer race when I was running an IRA event we had people like Aris Lanny and they were running nine ATS at 140 miles an hour but those were essentially drag cars they've some of the weight of most of the weight stripped out but they were still Street Jessica so sorry folks the charger would have won that race but there's more to the discussion the discussion really needs to talk about what cars were actually used that day my super as I said made about 570 horsepower the way it's set on that I'm not set on that day the Chargers that we use we had a total of five chargers and they all use two different v8 some of them use 318 I think a couple had the 383 s if you take a look at the available engines for the Dodge Charger you'll see what was available that year and you can go online of course and take a look at their specs available v8 engines for the 69 charger included several options the 318 two barrel the 383 two-barrel a 383 with the four-barrel a 426 with two four barrels a 440 with the single four belt and a 440 with three two-barrel carburetors there were plenty of different options available for that car but of course any car that we would have used as a movie car would have not have been a souped up modified car with heads and cams and increased compression all that it would have been a junkyard rescue that was barely running and it just needed to get down the street and so I believe most of those cars were 318 s of course those cars have since disappeared you know there's so many different copies and replicas it's difficult to discern exactly what exactly what car was used in what scene I know that crashed charger has resurfaced and that cars floating around so who knows what engines and that now have that information bottom line is that particular scene it doesn't really matter which car won because the producers had already predetermined which car was going to win the answer is neither of them neither of them could win because Paul was the hero and VIN was the antihero so they had to be equally matched and if you really want to split hairs and slow down the video you'll see that the Supra appears to touch the ground first after it lands by a millisecond and the Supra is right now I mean the charger is right next to it so who won you could go free frame by frame and say the super won by a nose but I'm telling you it doesn't really matter simple fact of the matter is in real life the charger would have won and it would not have been close so hate to burst your bubble but I hope that you find that information useful anyway thanks for watching this week I'll try to get back to you in two weeks I'm going to Sweden for a book signing event out to the bill storage bill sports show and elmia Sweden so I'm looking forward to meeting my European friends hope to see you all again in a couple of weeks thanks for tuning in don't forget to follow me on Instagram and don't forget to buy the book thanks so much everybody have a great week [Music] [Music]

Channel: Craig Lieberman

Views: 94,142

Rating: 4.9147568 out of 5

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Id: -tOp96rz8fw

Length: 9min 58sec (598 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 24 2018