There’s no doubt that the late-model Dodge Challengers and Chargers have taken off in popularity over the last several years. Once Dodge equipped them with superchargers in the Hellcat models, the game was truly on, and enthusiasts like Zdung Ho have now taken these machines to levels unheard of for such beastly vehicles.

It’s true, the biggest downfall to the Hellcat-spec Dodge products—and most late-model muscle cars for that matter—has been the curb weight, but the Dodge contingent of racers just don’t seem to care about that. They make more power and continue to run quicker and faster with their hot rods, even at weights well over 4,000 lbs.

Dayton, Texas’ Zdung Ho is one of those enthusiasts, and he has not only taken his Hellcat Charger to the 10s, 9s, and 8s, but he’s been in the 7s with it and held the 1/4-mile elapsed time record for quite some time.

Ho raced import cars in his early years, but then joined the military and didn’t really have time for his hobby.

“I’ve always loved working on and modifying cars to make them my own,” Ho said. “It’s always been about performance for me, but it wasn’t until I owned a Hellcat that I began to get serious.” Ho purchased the Hellcat brand new.

“I needed an external motivator to keep me enthusiatic about coming in to work, so it was either a C6 Corvette or a Hellcat,” Ho said of his 2016 Charger. “The wife liked the Hellcat more for its color, Go Mango, and so that’s where my journey with this car began. I drove it every day for a couple of months before I started thinking I was wasting what the car was built for.”

Truth be told, this wasn’t Ho’s first Mopar.

“I actually owned a 2009 SRT8 Challenger six-speed when they first came out. My interest in modifications never took me beyond just changing out the exhaust and wheels on it, though, and eventually I sold it many years later as it barely got driven. It was really cool, but really slow.”

Ho explained to us that he was like a fish out of water when he first purchased the Hellcat.

“I was unfamiliar with the car, but guys approached me and gave me tips,” Ho told us. “ I started building up knowledge on the car, the platform, and the Dodge brand. I started doing all of the work and tuning myself.”

Through slow but steady progression, Ho chipped away at the 1/4-mile times.

“This car was way faster than anything I had ever driven. I ran 11s and then 10s, then broke into the 9s. Then, I had the quickest blower-only record at 9.1 and became the first Hellcat Charger to run an 8. I also had the first 7-second Hellcat Charger and was the only one until Colby [Davis] did it recently.

I’ve evolved with this car through many stages from when it was running low 9’s with bolt on’s and E85 to becoming the first Hellcat Charger in the 8s, which was done with a built 428 DPE motor, Paramount Performance Built HP90 eight-speed transmission, and a 4.5-liter Whipple [supercharger]. That combo would take me down to several 8.1-second passes before the crank broke in half. A new 441 DPE motor with a refreshed eight-speed and the same 4.5-liter Whipple would help this car become the first Hellcat Charger in the 7s, with a best ET of 7.72 at 178 mph on factory-style IRS suspension and factory 3.09 rear gear. A year later, after upgrading to the new 3.8-liter Whipple along with new Nitrous Outlet Hemi intake plates, I bested my previous e.t. with a new current best of 7.62 at 183 mph.  This was the record until Colby Davis claimed it for himself with his 7.53 at 181 mph.”

With that kind of performance, Ho has found the factory eight-speed, even once fortified by the capable folks at Paramount Performance Products, to simply not be enough, so he has engineered his Dodge to accept a Turbo 400 transmission built by FTI to handle the four-digit horsepower numbers. And just as the transmission became a weak link, so, too, have the factory engine blocks, as Ho’s Hellcat recently suffered a cracked cylinder block. He’s now in the process of having a replacement engine built for the Charger.

To get his Charger back up running and racing, Ho is having a BGE cast-iron block built up by TKM Performance, and Demon Performance will be handling the long-block assembly. They will bolt on the Thitek Gen III Hemi cylinder heads before Ho sets the Whipple Superchargers Gen 5 3.8-liter blower on top.

Enthusiasts such as Ho and Colby Davis usually compete at Mopar events in a Heavyweight class. Ho noted that his Hellcat in stock form weighed in at 4,750 lbs with him in the driver’s seat, but these days he has the curb weight trimmed down to just 4,300-4,600 depending on the class he is racing.

What’s also interesting is that during Ho’s journey, he’s learned so much that he went in to business tuning other enthusiasts’ vehicles.

“At some point during my journey learning to tune for myself, I had aquired so much knowledge and experience that I felt it would be a shame to horde it all to myself,” Ho explained. “That’s when I decided to tune for a few others who went out of their way to reach out to me. What started as a few folks here and there grew into what’s now a full-time gig tuning for shops and individuals across the world.”

Like any other successful racer, Ho works with successful companies on his build, such as Demon Performance, TKM Performance, Paramount Performance Produts, Whipple Superchargers, Nitrous Outlet, The Driveshaft Shop, and BMR. He’s also had the loyal support of his wife.

“We run an extremely small operation. It’s usually just me and her at the track and when we travel.” With a new engine coming and upgrades in the future, it sounds like they will have plenty more travel in their future.