Welcome to the board, Chief!
Where at in Pittsburgh are you located? I'm about an hour north of the city. We'll have to include you on our occasional Crossfire get togethers in the region. We have a couple folks from Erie, Akron, Cleveland and the general north east Ohio, north west PA.
Anyway, back to your questions about modding your SRT-6:
First, you have to decide what your goal is. Will you be drag racing? Road racing? Or just enjoying a powerful drive?
For the drag racers, it's almost all about making more horsepower and getting it to the ground. For the road racer (JaneBridges and a few others) its less about power and more about handling.
Before I get too far ahead of myself, let me just point out three mods that you will enjoy no matter what you plan to do with your car:
1) a Cold Air Intake - the stock intake is restrictive, opening that up should net you about 25 horse power.
2) a Pulley - by putting a larger crank pulley or a smaller supercharger pulley on you're getting more boost and making more power - depending on which pulley you choose, you'll get around 20-30 horse power.
3) an dyno tune - yes, you really should get your car tuned on a dyno. It costs more than a "canned" tune, but it is enough better to be noticeable and makes sure that you're not leaning out during any of the RPM range.
With those three mods, I would even do them in that order. You don't really _need_ the tune unless you're planning to mod the engine further, but an ECU tune always helps.
As for which CAI to choose, they all give performance numbers very similar to each other. So go with which one is the most aesthetically pleasing to you and your wallet.
Choosing a pulley can be a little harder, though some of the choices aren't even available anymore. Does anyone make the 181 anymore? Are Code3 pullies still available? Did they work out their manufacturing issues? The 178 pulley seems to be the most popular.
ECU tunes generally come two vendors: Eurocharged and InMotion. There are other shops that do them, but those two are the most popular by far. There may be a new shop opening up, which is an off-shoot of Eurocharged. I don't know any specifics on that.
Good luck! Drop me a PM and we can meet up some weekend and talk shop.
P.S. I highly recommend NeedsWings. Rob is a great guy and will help you any way he can. I have more NeedsWings parts on my car than I can count - OK, not that many, but you get the idea.
