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What the **** is going on? Loss of power.

23K views 16 replies 9 participants last post by  Punisher69 
#1 ·
Hey guys, when i got my car, which was on november and it was winter, it performed amazingly, it was very fast and very responsive, now the heat is back in my country and bear in mind, temperature averages at 34 degrees Celsius here, which is really hot, and I noticed my car is quite sluggish nowadays, the pedal is not as responsive, and worst part i recently did a muffler delete so i thought the loss of power could be from that but i highly doubt it. Anyways, what really bothered me was, yesterday a stock v6 challenger beat me in a race, STOCK!!! I have raced with alot more powerful cars than that and beat em, could it be the guy had a secret under the hood, could it be the muffler delete cause me a loss of power, or maybe the high temp weather caused the engine to lose power?
 
#3 ·
Thats what im sure of! But any idea why I even lost power in the first place? Could it be the heat? In this case i think my best solution is installing an intake like the LMI airhammer...
 
#4 · (Edited)
I know this is a long shot but have you taken into consideration of the adaptations? You're Charger will adapt to the way you drive it. So if you drive it conservatively and only go WOT once a week than your throttle WILL gradually get more and more squishy in a sense to help provide a more luxurious feeling when driving the car. If you have a Diablo tuner try to reset your adaptations and if you don't I am sure someone on here can tell you what fuse to pull and put back in to reboot the system. I kinda had this happen to me (I do a lot of city driving) and when I tuned my Charger I reset the adaptations and it was like I woke my car up from hibernation lol. Keep us up to date!

P.S. Doing a muffler delete will NOT make you lose power. In fact you may actually pick up a few more horses since the stock exhaust system is basically 4 giant mufflers. The only way I could think you would lose anything from exhaust is to install a 3" straight pipe from the catalytic converter. That would lower your back pressure and you would lose some low end torque but that could easily be compensated with a high stall converter.
 
#5 ·
Well to be honest I do go WOT a couple of times a day actually, but your probably right about the adaptations tho, i also considered the possibility that when doing the muffler delete there was a leak, but i highly doubt that as a leak would be obvious.

I did a little testing for my 0-100 km/h, and averaged about 7.2 seconds, bear in mind I have a Charger RT 13", I feel this is too slow, I assumed i would be in the low 5 seconds, if this also helps the weather today is 34 degrees Celsius.
 
#6 ·
Wow that does seem very very slow! Mine is normally around 5.2ish on 0-60 MPH (0-100 km/h). When I had my mid-muffler delete the exhaust guy welded all the way around the straight pipe to make sure there was no leak. I may be wrong but even with an exhaust leak you still shouldn't be seeing times that high. If I were you I would pop the hook and reset your adaptations and also if you have an CAI check all of your clamps to make sure everything is still secure and snug and there isn't any air leaks. Sometimes it can also be something as simple as a bad tank of gas.
 
#7 ·
Well Thats the thing I only have the stock intake, I am planning on purchasing the LMI AirHammer intake, this is really strange, I would love to know which fuse to pull, i hope someone out there knows which one it is. Other than that I dont understand how all of the sudden I got such power loss, could it be related to my engine oil? Or bad tires ?:frown2:
 
#9 ·
Don't overlook the mid-muffler delete as a cause - I personally do feel that it altered how my engine performs. Doubt that it's related to backpressure but there is hesitation/sluggishness when I do mid-throttle accelerating, like around 2-3k. If I apply gradual but consistent throttle from stop, it seems to rev uncertainly a bit more before upshifting. I only have moderate mods but am considering a Diablo to firm everything up.
 
#11 ·
I know exactly what you mean as I am experience this as well, I do believe Ill need the diablo, but sometimes i just think that its all in my head, but idk to be honest :serious:
 
#12 ·
You know, I felt this way this past weekend when the temperature was almost 90 degrees outside. Middle of the day, just decided to floor it. Car just didn't want to go, and the in dash HP meter seemed to linger more in the 300hp range than the 400hp range.

However, at night the car seemed to "wake up".

Don't these cars adjust for ambient temperatures? I know my old SRT4 did, the PCM would increase boost when it was warmer outside, and lower boost when it was cold to maintain the same hp range.

Our cars aren't boosted, but I'm pretty sure there should still be some way for the PCM to adjust for ambient temperatures, be it timing or whatever.

If this holds up, I'm not looking forward to Florida summer time. :lol:
 
#14 ·
When it is hot the incoming air charge is considerably less dense than cold air. The pcm adjusts the fuel, and will pull timing to prevent knock, so you will be down on power on a hot afternoon.

Ddaddy posted something a while back about how much a 20 degree temp difference affects the power.
Yes, an NA engine will be sensitive to temperature changes and the power it can make. A 20°F temp difference can make a substantial difference in power output since the air charge is controlled solely by the density of the ambient air being drawn in and nothing in the engine can compensate for the change in mass of the charge. It can only inhale a certain volume and the air density of what it can inhale determines the power it can produce from that mass of air per stroke. The ambient temperature determines what that density is.

A FI engine can/will have the capability of adjusting the boost based on temperature to maintain the total mass of the air charge by adding more boost at higher temps to make the same mass of air being pushed into the engine...but a NA engine simply cannot, and is at the mercy of the ambient temperature of the environment.

Largely, this is why they put superchargers on WWII aircraft to maintain power and performance and high altitudes. It's the same principle.
 
#13 ·
When it is hot the incoming air charge is considerably less dense than cold air. The pcm adjusts the fuel, and will pull timing to prevent knock, so you will be down on power on a hot afternoon.

Ddaddy posted something a while back about how much a 20 degree temp difference affects the power.
 
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