Swagger, Heft and the Roots of the Hellcat - 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.com

Swagger, Heft and the Roots of the Hellcat - 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 Long-Term Road Test

The Edmunds long-term 2007 Dodge Charger SRT8 is nearly a decade older than a Charger Hellcat, but it delivers the same attitude.

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prndlol

The dash is indeed from a time at Chrysler (2004-2009) when they raced to build the cheapest, crudest, rudimentary interior and then promptly tried to beat that record.

But I'd like to hear more about the tired suspension and power steering, because at 110,000 km they should be anything but worn.

socal_eric

Unless you bought a car from an owner that took meticulous care to go above and beyond the factory recommended service (assuming they kept up on that), the power steering fluid probably hasn't been changed and is a likely source for the noise. The factory fill is ATF+4 transmission fluid and I'd suspect that if you look at it and the fluid is dark brown it's never been changed and will cause some noise as it breaks down with age.

If you don't want to do a flush, try taking a turkey baster and sucking the reservoir out and refill with fresh ATF+4, drive a bit, then repeat until it appears bright reddish. Then just drain the reservoir and refill at each oil change or so and you'll increase the life of the steering gear and pump by quite a bit. The ATF+4 is a high quality synthetic fluid and any one that is licensed by Chrysler is essentially the same so pick up Wal-Mart's house SupeTech or whatever the cheapest bottles at the auto part store and you should be good (there's only a couple suppliers anyway that bottle and package for different resellers).

With the car's age and not knowing the service history a brake fluid flush ad bleed would help with ABS HCU life. If I bought one used of this era I'd also probably do a cooling system flush and replace with factory equivalent fill of Zerex G-05 coolant (same thing as Mopar but with different dye coloring) and distilled water if you don't know that it was changed recently and can't be sure if anyone topped it off with incompatible fluid (which degrades and cancels out the supposed "long-life" 5/100k change interval).