How to tune a car right: Part 3, tuning Mopar with OST Dyno

Not long ago, I wrote a story about a pony car tuned with a supercharger. The blower install had been done properly. Then the car's owner bolted on a set of great looking wheels wrapped in good looking but inexpensive rubber. On my first test drive, I couldn't get any of that supercharged sweetness to the ground. It was the perfect ride for parking in a Burger King parking lot on a Friday night. I tooled around on a Sunday drive, shaking my head that someone had spent five figures to get more power the right way, with a clean install, then wiped out the gains so thoroughly that the stock engine would likely have overwhelmed the tires.

This got me thinking about the ways people ruin their quest for horsepower, either on the front end by not insisting on a clean install and paying the money for it, or on the back end with supplemental purchases like cheap tires or cheap gas. So I called three tuners, one focused on GM, one on Mopar, one on Ford, to find out what people should know about how to get the best power for their goals, and how to make sure they are able to use all that power. The first interview in this three-part series was with Blake Leonard at Top Speed Cincy in Cincinnati, Ohio, the second with Brandon Alsept at BA Motorsports in Milford, Ohio. This third and last interview is with Micah Doban at OST Dyno in Slippery Rock, Pennsylvania, a family business with more than 40 years of Mopar expertise specializing in Gen III Hemis, but tuning everything from land-speed cars and drag racers to Jeeps

The interview has been edited for clarity and concision.

Do people who come to OST generally know what they want?

Probably 80% of the people who come in simply want more power with no particular ET goal [ET is a kind of bracket handicapped drag racing – ed.].

What’s the best way to start a Mopar tune?

The first thing is what people often skip, and that's to find a tuner or a shop. People will throw parts on their cars that the Internet said to, then go to a tuner who does things a different way, and [the tuner is] like ‘No we don't like to use these injectors, we don't like these parts.’ You have to find someone familiar with the parts that are on your car or that you're planning to put on your car.

So having a goal and then finding a tuner who can help you with that goal is proper way to start.

Exactly. And a lot of tuners have their own formula – and when I say tuner I mean someone that also does work to the cars. Not someone that just tunes on the Internet, someone who dials the cars in, knows what works knows what doesn't.

I own a GM product. A cold-air intake, headers and exhaust are the go-to starters. Is it the same for Mopars?

Those parts won't add power to a 6.4 engine, they will add sound. We can do a tune and you'll pick up power from the tune, but those parts themselves, unlike a GM, will not add power to the factory stuff that's already super efficient.

What should someone know about tuning Mopars specifically?

They're not a GM or a Ford. We see shops that say ‘Yeah, I do tunes with GM, I can do your Chrysler,’ and they can't. Especially on the newer Chryslers, stuff gets really complicated. As far as parts go, we really don't do much on the cars, everything works very well from factory. Most of our cars are still on the factory transmission and diff and axles and motor, so we push the factory stuff pretty hard before we need to change it. But there's no oil pump gear issues like the Fords. There's not really an Achilles heel of these motors, which is pretty great.

When makes Chrysler motors more complex?

It's not the motors, it's the tuning – the engine and transmission computers, coding. Let's compare year to year, so we'll do a 2014 Camaro to a 2014 Challenger. It’s much easier for the Camaro to be tuned. You can put a big rowdy cam in the GM and blower and it'll be really easy to tune. If you do that with a Chrysler, especially once you get above 2014, it's very complex. They don't like to have all these different modifications.

If I have a stock NA Mopar and want 20 to 40 more horses, what should I do first?