2w
Morning walk car spotting
Looks like someone in my neighborhood is taking delivery of this Dodge Viper. I imagine this thing is a blast to drive. A lot of power in a lightweight package. I've always been a big fan of theses.
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Reply Replies (13)
· 2w
My former boss had a GTS a couple years older in the same color. It was about as refined as a sledgehammer. Terrible wheelhop in lower gears but it was fun to feel the torque pull in the higher gears.
· 2w
How old was your boss? My problem with all this stuff is you only see 50 plus year old guys driving them.
· 2w
😂 He was mid-50’s when he bought it new. Sold it when it was almost 20 years old with barely 10k miles on it. He got decent money for it because it was absolutely showroom condition but he still didn’t break even.
· 2w
Despite the fact that it had no miles on it, it still suffered the harmonic balancer failure that these had a problem with. The pulley wasn’t keyed and it would spin on the crank snout, chewing it all up. Somebody made a kit with a drill guide so you could drill through a new balancer and the crank and put a roll pin in it. That was about the scariest drilling job I’ve ever done.
· 2w
It’s funny that you mention the age thing because I just remembered that we used to refer to it as the “Dodge Viagra”….when we weren’t referring to it as “ The Clown Shoe”.
· 2w
The funny part about that problem is it didn't happen with the early cars, it was like Gen III or IV where it shows up. The fix is like you said, you can by a pin kit for 86 bucks from Summit.
· 2w
I don’t know if they just didn’t have a tight enough interference fit or what but there are plenty of cars running blowers off non-keyed pulleys and they never spin.
· 2w
My best friend and I owned cars individually, and also several cars jointly. He was a wheeler dealer, and I was an enabler. We had a couple years ownership of a viper. We traded two cars for it. It stayed at my buddies building for about 4 years of ownership. I drove it twice. It never did much for me. I hear the word “sledgehammer” mentioned a lot. To me its austerity was disingenuous. Instead of making it feel raw and authentic, it felt cheap and plastic. I am decades past wanting to go “supercar fast”. Eventually, my friend fell out of love with it too, and the car was sold, and I think he got it out of his system.
· 2w
John, I think you were just too young to appreciate a viper.
· 2w
John, I concur with your findings. They never really let you forget that it was a car designed in the late 80’s with a truck engine and inspired by an already unrefined 60’s car. I would argue that a Corvette Z06 of the same age was a much more well-rounded package and sounded better too.
· 2w
Travis, you took the words out of my mouth. They wanted a brute fast car that the Z06 did with a lot of refinement. The Viper “missed”
· 2w
I think you’re on to something. My wife does tell me to Grow Up every once in a while.