We’re always getting plenty of awesome and wacky readers’ projects submitted for our In The Build section of the magazine, including New Zealander Kent Lobb’s 1968 Dodge Charger.

Kent is midway through a significant rebuild of the iconic muscle machine. “I’ve owned it for around five years now, and so far it has undergone extensive body repairs and chassis strengthening,” he told us.

That chassis strengthening is necessary, because while most would be more than content with the 440 big-block V8 the Charger came with, Kent wasn’t. The 440 has been shown the door, replaced by an 8.3-litre V10 from a Dodge Viper, and if that’s not enough, he’s also bolted a pair of BorgWarner S366 turbos to the side for good measure.

The engine is now in and running, having made already made a best of 950rwhp and 1327lb-ft. “That was at 7psi, but we were battling with the rolling-road dyno, as it’s a torque monster,” says Kent. “We’re aiming to get it on the hub dyno in the coming months, and with some bigger injectors, we should see four figures.”

The third-gen Viper engine has been rebuilt to handle up to 1400hp, backed by a Turbo 400 ’box and a Dana 60 rear end. Fitting the engine was no small task, so Kent had the crew at Peterson Fabrication tackle the big fab jobs. “We had to fabricate a custom sump, engine mounts, transmission crossmember and make an adapter kit to fit the built TH400,” he says.

All the exhaust piping was handmade as well, with stainless steampipe headers using four-inch dumps to a full three-inch system that exits at the rear. Engine management is a Link G4+ Storm ECU, with a massive fuel system using Turbosmart regulators, DeatschWerks fuel pumps and a surge tank to keep the V10 well fed with 95.

As we write, the car is currently off for paint, where it’ll cop a nice fresh lick of gloss black. “We want to keep the classic look, so we squeezed the biggest Wilwood brakes we can in each corner so we can still run the correct smaller-style wheels,” says Kent.

We’ll be pestering Kent for more updates on the Charger as he goes, and if you have a sweet project you want to tell us about, simply submit a bunch of high-resolution pics and around 200 words of info to [email protected].