The folks at Arrington Performance are on the cutting edge of Hemi engine development – as a Tier 1 supplier to the Dodge and Chrysler boys, they get to play with all the cool stuff before the rest of the world sees it. Not only do they work with Dodge, they also consult with aftermarket companies to develop and test new products for the Hemi platform.

In this sneak peek of performance parts to come, a completely stock 5.7L Hemi topped with a 2.9L Whipple twin-screw  supercharger pumped out 597.8 horsepower and 614.7 ft./lbs. of torque on the Arrington Performance dyno. It’s one of five engine dynamometers in the building to go along with a trio of SpinTron machines and a chassis dyno. The supercharger kit has not been released to the general public at this time, as the Arrington team is still working through a number of calibration elements hand-in-hand with the Whipple engineers.

As Whipple develops supercharger systems by adapting different compressors to specific engine, the engineering team spends hundreds of hours creating miscellaneous parts and pieces to make each kit work with different vehicle platforms. This particular fitment necessitates that the supercharger be turned around; that is, the typical entry point at the rear of the supercharger is placed in the front, and a jackshaft is subsequently used to transfer the power to the gearset. There are a number of advantages to this design, most notably cleaning up the airflow, as the inlet can be fashioned with a 90-degree turn into the blower rather than the 180-degree turn required in other fitments that use the inlet in the rear of the engine.

“One of our core values for every kit we build is to go with the largest supercharger possible, and the biggest intercooler possible while maintaining the factory hoodline,” Whipple Superchargers’ Dustin Whipple explains. “We had to push the supercharger backward on the manifold and lower the jackshaft to get the supercharger pulley low enough to work. Getting everything to fit properly to build an OEM-type system takes a considerable amount of time. Once that’s done and the parts are designed and made, the next hurdle is the calibration of components.

“This is such a wide platform with the 5.7, 6.1, 6.4 Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep applications that span 2006-14, and there have been a multitude of updates in that time span,” continues Whipple. “We originally concentrated on the 6.1 Challenger kit, which is now available, and then went back to update for all of the other fitments. The base 2.9L unit stays the same – it’s our most popular supercharger. The manifolds, heat exchangers, brackets, and drive system are all different per platform.”

“We are doing validation work with a wide range of engines on this system for Whipple. We’re testing it on the VVT engines – the 5.7 and the 6.4, and then we’re going to do an install on this with a 426 in a 2014 Challenger,” says Arrington President/CEO Eric Hruza. “We’re really impressed with the kit – it’s probably a two-day job in the driveway, and is well thought-out and complete – everything from the supercharger to the pins to pin the crankshaft comes in the box. Other than to say it’s making serious power, I can’t release final power numbers yet as we’re still on the engine dyno with the powerplant.”