Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / From Poster to Performance: How One Teen’s Dream Became Havik Performance
Transcript
- 0:00Break Fix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from all
- 0:05over the autos sphere, from wrench, turners, and racers to artists, authors,
- 0:09designers, and everything in between.
- 0:11Our goal is to inspire a new generation of Petrolhead that wonder.
- 0:16How did they get that job or become that person?
- 0:19The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story.
- 0:27For many of us, it all begins with a dream, inspired by a poster on
- 0:32the wall, a small collection of Hot Wheels, a race you saw on tv.
- 0:36But for our guest, his dream began when he was 14 years old.
- 0:39His father purchased his dream car, a Dodge Viper.
- 0:43They started attending events together, learning more about the car, and
- 0:46meeting like-minded car enthusiasts.
- 0:48Joining the Viper Club of America opened him up to understand what Viper
- 0:52owners expected from mechanics, how they wanted to modify their cars,
- 0:57and what they wanted to be restored.
- 0:59And with that.
- 1:00A single dream realized havoc performance was founded to offer
- 1:05a premier automotive business that would provide white glove treatment
- 1:09paired with constant communication and above standard industry expectations.
- 1:13And to talk to us about all things.
- 1:15Vipers is Mike Vic, founder of Havoc Performance.
- 1:20Joining me and filling in for Brad is my guest host and newly minted Viper
- 1:26owner, the one, the only Mr. Andrew Bank.
- 1:30So welcome both of you, Mike, and Andrew to break fix.
- 1:34Thanks for having me.
- 1:35Really appreciate it.
- 1:37Yeah, thanks, Eric.
- 1:38Unfortunately, finally caved all on my first podcast ever.
- 1:42Uh, I don't know how I feel about this drag kicking and screaming.
- 1:45We're doing it together.
- 1:46At least there's a viper in the background.
- 1:48A hundred percent.
- 1:49And we will get into that in a little bit.
- 1:51So, Mike, we met recently at Watkins Glen.
- 1:54You were working on all things a Jaguar, and we got to talking
- 1:58about a bunch of different stuff.
- 1:59And then you mentioned something that really got my attention,
- 2:02which was the word viper.
- 2:03And like you, I've been in love with the Viper since the very first one came out.
- 2:08And let's face it, it's the hottest car from the nineties
- 2:11that was designed in the eighties.
- 2:13Right.
- 2:13Let's talk about all things Viper, but first let's kick off with the origin
- 2:18of havoc performance, what you provide and where this evolution is gone
- 2:23from you having this poster on your wall to now being a Viper aficionado.
- 2:27It really started, like we said, kind of in that intro about.
- 2:30I was probably about 14 years old.
- 2:32My dad bought that Viper, and it was just so much fun going out to the
- 2:35events and meeting all the people.
- 2:37They always joke around that like, you buy the car because it's gorgeous, right?
- 2:40We love Vipers for what they are.
- 2:42They're beautiful cars, but you keep the car because of the people you
- 2:45meet through the clubs and the people are second to none on top of it.
- 2:50Growing up and getting to watch all that and meet all these great people and
- 2:54just watching some people's experiences when you go to shops and stuff and
- 2:57their cars sit outside in the rain, like when they're not getting worked
- 3:00on and all that jazz, it's like I found that unacceptable even when I was 18.
- 3:05If you're gonna have a car like that, you expect it to be treated like your baby.
- 3:09When I started to go, okay, well, like maybe I could start a business working
- 3:12on cars, doing that sort of thing, it was one of those where I wanted to
- 3:16make sure that I built a business that not only communicated, because that's
- 3:19the biggest issue with most shops, is they don't tell them or give them
- 3:22realistic deadlines, or even if the deadline is pushed, they're not updated.
- 3:26So.
- 3:26Communication was the biggest part of it.
- 3:28And the other thing was taking care of their cars like, like a baby of mine.
- 3:32'cause at the end of the day, our cars are like our children
- 3:34in a sense, always wanted to make sure that they were clean battery
- 3:37tenders while I had them in my shop.
- 3:38And they would never sit outside in the weather.
- 3:40They had to go outside in the sun.
- 3:42They'd sit out in the sun for a little bit, but they'd never be out
- 3:44in the rain or anything like that.
- 3:46As years went on, we were watching all this stuff happen and people
- 3:49would take 'em to shops and some shops would end up wrecking vipers
- 3:53because nobody really knew what to do.
- 3:54And some young guy would take it out.
- 3:56And if you floor these things in third gear, if you're at a high enough RPM,
- 3:59you could spin the tires if it's.
- 4:01Not the right condition.
- 4:02So it can get dangerous pretty quick.
- 4:04It's, it's 'cause it's got all the torques, right?
- 4:07Yes.
- 4:07Peak torque is like 3000 RPMs for the record.
- 4:10Like that's awesome.
- 4:11You hit 3000 and you're just about around peak torque.
- 4:13That's like a truck.
- 4:14Yeah, we we'll into that too.
- 4:16It's, it also sounds like one that's, it sounds like two five
- 4:21cylinder Audis running together.
- 4:23That's all I know.
- 4:24That's for damn sure.
- 4:26Just stand on each side of the car and you'll figure that out.
- 4:30So it all started off with like, I saw a need.
- 4:33As I started to do like car collection management, even when I
- 4:36was younger, like a friend of ours had a car collection of like 50 cars.
- 4:39He's got a little bit of everything and he watched me grow working
- 4:42outta my parents' garage.
- 4:44I was doing oil changes for him when I was like 16, 17.
- 4:47All my friends knew and most of my high school knew that I had like a
- 4:49two car garage, my parents' place.
- 4:51So they'd all shipped their stuff up to me and we'd work on it and figure
- 4:54it out and brake slowly turned into, oh, well let's rebuild a motor.
- 4:58Let's put transmissions in, let's do performance shocks, and all that other
- 5:02fun stuff That continued to grow.
- 5:04And while the first guy that I was working with, he watched me
- 5:07grow and do all those things, gave me more and more responsibility.
- 5:10When I was a junior in college, I was actually going to Penn State at the
- 5:13time, studying business and marketing.
- 5:15He met with the one Viper guy we met through the Viper Club and he
- 5:18said, who works in all your cars?
- 5:20Well, Mike Junior did.
- 5:21So I started working for the Viper guy.
- 5:23And 2015 he had six cars.
- 5:26As of today, we're up to 52 in his collection.
- 5:28Holy cow.
- 5:29That's something you mentioned to me at the track.
- 5:31You actually manage the second largest Viper collection in the us correct?
- 5:36The second largest, the first largest is down in Texas.
- 5:39And last I heard they were at 94 Vipers, but they have like two.
- 5:43Is this one person owner, is this like a company that owns them all?
- 5:46That's one person for both collections.
- 5:49Wow.
- 5:49Well, husband and wife for one month.
- 5:52I had two Vipers in the scratch.
- 5:53One didn't run and the cooling tank didn't, uh, didn't fill up, but you know
- 5:58that's okay for a brief and one month minor problems, somewhere on that list.
- 6:04They're highly desirable, very bottom, and honestly meeting those guys that have all
- 6:08those vipers, you would never guess that they'd have more than one talking to 'em.
- 6:11And that's the one of the best parts about the Viper Club.
- 6:14I don't think we delved into what you offer at havoc as service products,
- 6:19et cetera, as part of your business.
- 6:20So do you wanna expand upon that for our listeners?
- 6:22Just so like people know in general here, I handle anything and everything, right?
- 6:26So I've got a guy's car who basically wants it essentially fully restored.
- 6:30I've got body shops I work with.
- 6:32I've got guys who come in and do paint correction for us.
- 6:35We handle suspension components, motor builds, all that stuff.
- 6:38And we do some of the things in-house.
- 6:40But basically I wanted to design my business where you could drop
- 6:44your car off and when you picked it up, everything would be done.
- 6:46If you wanted clear blood done, we would have it done for you and
- 6:49someone would come in and do it.
- 6:51If you wanted any of those services done, we could handle it.
- 6:53And it's expanded into doing.
- 6:55Pre track inspection forms and going to track days with customers and making
- 7:00sure their cars are on tiptop shape.
- 7:02So it's really expanded into a bunch of different things.
- 7:04So it's not like, oh yeah, I'm just gonna go get this engine
- 7:07work done and that's that.
- 7:08It's okay, I can go see him.
- 7:10We can set events up, we can get the whole car detailed and you know,
- 7:15so a bunch of different things.
- 7:16But I have all my services too on the website if anyone wants to dive
- 7:19deeper into some of those things.
- 7:20But if you need something done nine times outta 10, we can handle it and you
- 7:24won't have to worry about the process and you work on more than just Viper.
- 7:28So that's always also good.
- 7:29So, uh, yeah, we've done, we've done a little bit of everything.
- 7:32Let's step back, let's step back to 13-year-old Mike Vic and talk about
- 7:38the car that was hot on his list before the Viper came on the scene.
- 7:42What was the poster on your wall when you were 13 years old?
- 7:45I had.
- 7:46I had two posters.
- 7:48It was Mustangs and Vipers.
- 7:50And at the time, all in my mind that I would be able to afford
- 7:53was going to be a Mustang.
- 7:54So I loved Mustangs.
- 7:56And then Vipers started to kind of creep up as more and more.
- 7:59And like one day my dad just walks out and we're sitting in the garage
- 8:02and he goes, well, Mike, I did it.
- 8:04There's a Viper coming.
- 8:05And I was like, you're shitting me.
- 8:07There's no way in hell a viper's coming.
- 8:08You're pulling my leg.
- 8:09And sure as hell, a trailer pulled up and dropped a viper off in our driveway.
- 8:13And that was when the really, the, the real big dream of it was really happening.
- 8:18Gen color and year are the first one.
- 8:20Should I make you guess?
- 8:22It's iconic Gen two blue, white stripe.
- 8:25Ah, man.
- 8:26You weren't kidding.
- 8:26You have two vipers.
- 8:30Yeah, it was, it's the, uh, the gen two iconic blue and white.
- 8:33Because it copied after the Shelby Daytona.
- 8:36That's right.
- 8:36And we'll, we'll expand upon that in a little bit.
- 8:39Those are crazy valuable right now.
- 8:41I just saw an alert on that.
- 8:42I get alerts every time that Vipers listed, because I've been
- 8:44looking for one my whole life.
- 8:46Yeah.
- 8:46Even though I just got one for the first time, I didn't
- 8:48unsubscribe from all these alerts.
- 8:50I got an email five minutes ago, hundred $19,000 for Blue White Gen two.
- 8:56I can tell you right now, I see cars.com and I, of course, I deleted
- 8:59it because I was like, that's a little outta my price range.
- 9:01Just, just a little bit.
- 9:03I think it was in the thirties or less.
- 9:04It's wild how much these things are going for now.
- 9:07And it's, it's specifically the blue and white.
- 9:09Yeah.
- 9:09The reds, the yellows.
- 9:10They're getting, they're going from 50, 60, sometimes 70.
- 9:13And that's the gen twos.
- 9:14I paid less for the gen threes.
- 9:16Everyone fucking hates them for some reason.
- 9:18Well, you have the coup.
- 9:19I know why.
- 9:20I know why.
- 9:20But yes, that's one thing for
- 9:26here you go.
- 9:2628,470 miles.
- 9:28He's out of his mind.
- 9:29I just coordinated a deal a couple months ago for a all original blue and white 96
- 9:36with like 5,000 miles and it was under 80.
- 9:38Wow.
- 9:39I just meant so horsepower.
- 9:40Look.
- 9:40Got it There you twin thousand horsepower twin Turbo makes a big difference.
- 9:44Yeah.
- 9:44Twin turbo.
- 9:452000 horsepower.
- 9:46Woo.
- 9:47Okay.
- 9:47That car will kill you.
- 9:49So let's get back to some more Viper origin stories.
- 9:53Right?
- 9:53As I was joking, the best car from the nineties that was designed in the
- 9:56eighties, and a lot of people don't realize that much like Lee Iacocca
- 10:01is credited for being, you know, the godfather of the Mustang, even
- 10:04though he didn't pen a single line on that car, he was the guy that pushed
- 10:08the Muang program forward, and it's been an iconic vehicle ever since.
- 10:13When he went to bat for Chrysler the second time, not the first time, the
- 10:18second time, to bring them back from the brink of complete destruction.
- 10:22There's a little bit of mystique and mystery behind the story of why Lee
- 10:27pushed for this skunkworks project.
- 10:29Known as the Viper Project.
- 10:30Got them a separate building, got car, his buddy Carol Shelby
- 10:33involved, things like that.
- 10:35So the plans for the Viper were already started in the eighties, and then
- 10:39when I saw a debut in 89 and it rolled out on the stage, it was one of those
- 10:43moments where it was like, this is the next best thing since sliced bread.
- 10:48Let's talk about those early vipers, what they really were,
- 10:52where the idea came from.
- 10:53I mean, you're an expert in these cars.
- 10:55Let's kind of nerd out on the original 92, 93, 94 Gen one vipers.
- 11:00So one of the big pushers for the Viper was Bob Lutz.
- 11:04There's a backstory to that that's not really ever talked about.
- 11:06Talk like I'll hear it at some of these like Viper team guys
- 11:09will hear, tell us some stories.
- 11:11Every so often you hear it pop up.
- 11:12But one of the reasons that they built the Viper was Bob Lutz was,
- 11:17would drive his Shelby Cobra to work and they would all razz him.
- 11:20He'd be like, all right, well like build me a car then that's Dodge that
- 11:24can compete with my co. Because right now, well, I'm gonna drive a minivan.
- 11:28Dodge wasn't doing too much in the performance world at the time.
- 11:31When it came to the original stuff, the main guys that were really pushing
- 11:34for it, they didn't have a budget.
- 11:36They didn't have any of that stuff.
- 11:37They had very little money to make these things happen.
- 11:40And let me tell you, they put a hell of a car together that can do many
- 11:44things that people don't realize.
- 11:46It's just crazy to see what they made back in 89 compared to even what they have now.
- 11:51It's one of those nice body styles that's almost timeless.
- 11:54'cause if you take the wheels off of an RT 10 target top the originals, and you
- 11:58put a set of gen five wheels on 'em.
- 12:00Yeah.
- 12:00If you get rid of those three spokes, you throw a new set of wheels on 'em.
- 12:03I've had people come up to me and say, is this car from like the two thousands?
- 12:06It's just crazy to see how these cars have been so timeless over the years.
- 12:10And there's a few other cars that are just like that.
- 12:13And I'll name drop them.
- 12:15The Gen three RX seven, the fourth gen Supra, the Audi R eight.
- 12:19Yeah.
- 12:20It doesn't matter what year it is.
- 12:22And you look at it today, you're like, it still looks new.
- 12:24It still looks modern.
- 12:25And I think the Viper is, is one of those designs.
- 12:28Granted we, we gotta discount the blocky Mercedes period there for a moment.
- 12:32But those early vipers, I mean they are, to your point, very
- 12:36reminiscent of the Shelby Cobra.
- 12:38And obviously having Carol Shelby involved in helping to design
- 12:42the original Viper is really important to that part of the story.
- 12:46It comes at a terrible time for Chrysler though.
- 12:49I mean, there's in dire straits, you know, on the brink of
- 12:52financial ruin and here they are building, quote unquote a supercar.
- 12:57How does that all work?
- 12:58Honestly, that's probably why the budgets were so tough and all the like
- 13:02crazy things that I know we'll get into later about some of these other stories.
- 13:05I get to tell you that they made happen and did the things that they
- 13:08did because the money wasn't there.
- 13:11But somehow they got through this process of things to make these cars and give
- 13:15them all this publicity, which I really think helped them in the long run.
- 13:19They didn't, I don't think they made a ton of money on the cars.
- 13:22One of the reasons why they probably stopped, but in the beginning.
- 13:25As far as the performance world, this stuff goes you, like you said,
- 13:27they were designed in the eighties and they lasted through the nineties
- 13:30and did a hell of a job doing it.
- 13:32And there was a gap there too between the initial prototype rollout in 89.
- 13:36Mm-hmm.
- 13:36To when the first one went on sale.
- 13:38The very first vipers in 92, that's a three year gap, so they
- 13:42spent that time refining it.
- 13:44The first vipers that launched don't exactly look like the prototype either.
- 13:48You know, they've been modified, they were slightly bigger,
- 13:50you know, things like that.
- 13:51They had to add some creature comforts, although there were very few.
- 13:54Yeah, yeah.
- 13:54Which we'll talk about.
- 13:55In those early cars, they had windows and.
- 13:59A roof and a doorknob.
- 14:02That stuff is all useless.
- 14:04You didn't need for that first one.
- 14:05Did the COBRA have any of that stuff?
- 14:07No.
- 14:07So the Viper didn't have it either, right?
- 14:09They didn't need it.
- 14:10No ac, none of that.
- 14:11Coming from the Cobra, we go to the Viper to continue with that lineage.
- 14:15It all, it all kind of gels together.
- 14:17It's obvious to us as Petrolhead, but it might not be obvious to somebody else.
- 14:21Like I don't, I don't get the history.
- 14:22So we're gonna fill in those gaps.
- 14:24And I remember one story that was kind of fun about the Skunk Works project.
- 14:28As they were putting it together, Lee Koco said, Hey, go take
- 14:31this building over there.
- 14:32Go work on it on your own.
- 14:33And I read this in his memoirs and he was saying about how guys were like
- 14:38basically taking the, the corporate minivans and running over to other
- 14:41parts of the campus and basically quote unquote, borrowing, we'll call it
- 14:45equipment, computers, whatever they could.
- 14:48Get in the back of a minivan and bringing it over to the skunkworks building.
- 14:51Roy Shoberg, he was the one overseeing the project at the time, right?
- 14:54He was the one that was building a team.
- 14:56So he was the one who put like Dick Winkles together, Tom Gale together.
- 14:59All those guys that made this viper happen.
- 15:01In the beginning, the team of guys were like, Roy, you need to get
- 15:04a minivan as your company car.
- 15:06And he goes, why the hell would I want a minivan as my company car?
- 15:09And he goes, we're gonna take the seats out of it.
- 15:11And because you're corporate, your car isn't inspected when it leaves the plants.
- 15:16So we're gonna drive to the other plants that we know aren't using computers
- 15:19and aren't using all the drafting stuff, and we're just gonna take it.
- 15:22We're gonna put in the van and we're gonna move it to where we need it to so
- 15:26we can use that stuff to develop this car because we don't have any money to do so.
- 15:30So that story is actually true, and it's rather hilarious that
- 15:33that actually happened because I mean, it nowadays, there's so much
- 15:36paperwork involved to do anything.
- 15:38Back then they were like, ah, fuck it.
- 15:40Like let's just do this.
- 15:41It's ingenious.
- 15:42And you know, it speaks to something that Lee talked about in his first
- 15:45autobiography when he went to Chrysler the first time, is that even though he was a
- 15:49Ford man and he had been at Ford forever, he said that there was always something
- 15:54about the Chrysler engineers that they were always thinking outside of the box.
- 15:57They were really a cut above.
- 15:59They just were performing surgery, as I like to call it, with a
- 16:02spoon and a screwdriver, right?
- 16:04They just never had the tools to bring these dreams to reality.
- 16:07And so they made a lot of, let's face it, a bunch of turds, right?
- 16:10Yep.
- 16:11But, and there was some cool stuff in the seventies and the muscle car era,
- 16:14but there was a this, this middle aged period of Chrysler, you're like, I don't
- 16:17want to talk about any of this stuff.
- 16:18And then along comes the Viper and you're like, whoa.
- 16:22And we can nerd out upon that.
- 16:24But there's some other, I think, myth busting we need to do along the way.
- 16:27And that's.
- 16:28The one you hear all the time.
- 16:29Well that's just a Lamborghini V 10.
- 16:31They didn't even develop that engine themselves or the other
- 16:34side, it's just a truck motor and it came out of an agricultural
- 16:38piece of equipment, blah, blah blah.
- 16:40So what's the truth?
- 16:41The truth is, at the time they did not have the molds or the technology
- 16:45to really make an all aluminum V 10.
- 16:47Dick Winkles at the time did go over to Lamborghini 'cause he was one of
- 16:51the head designers of the Viper motor.
- 16:53And they worked with Lamborghini to figure out how to make the motor run
- 16:58cool enough, work well enough being all aluminum, because Lamborghinis was
- 17:02making aluminum blocks at the time.
- 17:04So it's not truly a Lamborghini motor because they took the basic design, kind
- 17:08of like from the trucks or even from the V eights, just added two cylinders.
- 17:11'cause that's all, it's really two inline fives essentially.
- 17:14So they used that platform, took some information from Lamborghini and
- 17:18then made it happen in the process.
- 17:19So.
- 17:20On one end, it's not on the other.
- 17:22It's kind of dead center as far as how that goes.
- 17:24Interesting.
- 17:25So it's a little bit of both, so everybody's sort.
- 17:27A little bit of both.
- 17:27So everybody's kind of right that applying to both the first
- 17:30gen and the third gen ones.
- 17:32I know they changed a lot about the engine between the, uh, what was it, 2003 remake
- 17:36when they went from gen two to gen three.
- 17:38Gen two and Gen three motors are different.
- 17:41Ironically enough, you can put gen three heads on top of a Gen two motor.
- 17:45The head gasket are.
- 17:46And so there are a lot of similarities.
- 17:49The design is kind of the same at the end of the day.
- 17:51They're all kind of the same motor.
- 17:54They just made improvements through the year, so there's
- 17:56definitely like a redesign.
- 17:57'cause they went up to the eight three and the gen threes
- 18:00versus uh, like the eight liter.
- 18:01So they 8, 8 4.
- 18:03Yeah.
- 18:03The eight three is the gen three.
- 18:04The eight four is the gen four.
- 18:06So oh, eight to 10 is gen, is the eight four.
- 18:09That's just, I know it's written on my little intake thing says 5 0 5 8 0.4.
- 18:13He's uh, he's fact checking.
- 18:14Oh yeah, I'm fact checking myself.
- 18:17How much did they change it to in 2008 when they made the gen four and they
- 18:21bumped it up a hundred horsepower.
- 18:23They went from five 10 to 6 0 5, 600 flat.
- 18:26And they literally, you know, they didn't change anything
- 18:28about the frame of the car.
- 18:29They just changed the intake and the manifold from my understanding.
- 18:32They went, well these aren't selling.
- 18:33We gotta do something and bump it up a hundred horsepower and make a
- 18:37cooler, you know, cooler hood with the three open vents instead of like the
- 18:41flatted, the displacement only went from an 8.3 to an 8.4 from the gen
- 18:45threes, which was oh three to 2006.
- 18:47And then the gen fours came out in oh eight and they, oh, eight
- 18:50to 10 was an 8.4 liter size block.
- 18:52But what they changed was they added like a variable timing
- 18:55essentially with the cam.
- 18:57By doing that, it was creating more power.
- 18:59B Tech, yo, you got BT Tech.
- 19:01Yeah, it's, I mean, kind of vanos, maybe it's more like vanos.
- 19:05Basically it's like a variable intake sort of situation where
- 19:08you were able, they were able to get some more power out of it.
- 19:10Yeah.
- 19:11Volkswagen introduced something like that in 2003 on the R 30 twos as well
- 19:15where they can change the length of the runners and all this kind of crazy
- 19:18stuff using vacuum and, and solenoids and all sorts of stuff that was prone
- 19:22to break, you know, so it was awesome.
- 19:23Yeah.
- 19:23So speaking of prone to break, let's talk a little bit about the early cars.
- 19:28'cause it's kinda still staggering.
- 19:29To put it in perspective, you're talking a quasi 500 horsepower
- 19:33car in the early nineties.
- 19:34I mean, even the F forties and other iconic super cars of that time
- 19:39weren't making that kind of power.
- 19:41Like this was the muscle car of the modern times.
- 19:44Right?
- 19:45And if you think about it, what things did the Vipers not come with?
- 19:49Let's start with that and then how have they evolved and what is still on?
- 19:53Let's say, let's, let's say what's.
- 19:56Still on a current viper, last Gen Viper.
- 19:58That's a carryover from the originals.
- 20:00Did anything make it all the way through?
- 20:02Every generation.
- 20:03They all stayed manual.
- 20:04You could never get 'em in an automatic.
- 20:06That's hugely awesome.
- 20:08Yeah.
- 20:08So that was one of the big things that, uh, they wanted
- 20:12was it had to stay raw, right?
- 20:14So they always kept them v tens and they always kept them manual transmissions.
- 20:18From 92 to 2010, there was no traction control, no stability control.
- 20:22It was only until the government mandated traction control, stability,
- 20:25control in the cars, which was what happened with the Gen five.
- 20:28So like the government stepped in and made that have to happen.
- 20:32Or like in 2001.
- 20:35They brought in a BS, so like in 2001 and newer Vipers will have,
- 20:39and we'll have a BS modules in 'em.
- 20:41Besides that, everything from 92 up to 2000, we'll have, uh, sorry, 2000.
- 20:46They brought the A BS in 92 to 99.
- 20:48There's no a, b, s. And which years did they actually have door handles and door
- 20:51locks and windows as Andrew alluded to?
- 20:55Um, so I mean, once they brought out the GTS model, so the coop,
- 20:59they had door handles on the coops.
- 21:01So in 96 they started to add door handles to the coop, well to the RT 10.
- 21:06So like they have this weird 96 and a half RT 10 that, like some of them didn't
- 21:11necessarily have exterior door handles.
- 21:13They were just still, you reached inside and grabbed the interior handle.
- 21:16So it's like the half year RT 10 stuff.
- 21:19That didn't have roll up windows.
- 21:21It didn't have necessarily have handles yet.
- 21:23So it's like that 97 era that they started to incorporate windows into
- 21:28the RT tens that weren't like in the trunk that you had to put in.
- 21:31You still the tops in the trunk that would go on.
- 21:33But, and that was another crazy story, right?
- 21:35Like, like a hideous little top hat.
- 21:38I hate the look.
- 21:39It just looked like a, like an old man with like a fake hair
- 21:42piece on and you could see it.
- 21:44It doesn't belong.
- 21:45Like he didn't glue it on all the way.
- 21:47It's as seams.
- 21:48Well, so that's the one thing that always bugged me about the RC 10.
- 21:52If you do, if you do 55 miles an hour, you won't get wet, just so you know.
- 21:55Um, but that arrow dynamic about that science, but it was another one
- 22:02of those situations where somebody in corporate was driving an RT 10
- 22:05and it started to rain in Detroit.
- 22:06So they were like, these things need roofs.
- 22:08We need to make sure that these have roofs because I don't wanna
- 22:11get stuck in the rain if I'm out.
- 22:12So that's why they ended up adding them into the fold up into the trunk, whereas.
- 22:15To my knowledge, cobras didn't have any roof system.
- 22:19It was, you better drive it while it's sunny or you're getting wet.
- 22:21Or they had those sort of tunnel covers.
- 22:24Like the old lotus's would have that, you know, they would
- 22:26use those button rivets Yeah.
- 22:28To like, you know, clip it on.
- 22:29It's like a leather cover.
- 22:30That was typical of British cars.
- 22:32'cause you gotta remember the Cobra itself started out as an AC going way
- 22:36back before Shelby got his hands on it.
- 22:38So there was a British roadster before you.
- 22:40They, they put the Ford heart in it and the Ford Drive train
- 22:44and all that kind of stuff.
- 22:45The Cobra kept that.
- 22:46And there's actually a really great video, which we'll post in the
- 22:48show notes that Jay Leno did during COVID of his 93, I believe it is.
- 22:55T 10, which he, he gets into this whole debate about whether he's the
- 22:58first one to own a black viper because they came red up until that point.
- 23:04And there's another gentleman that contests that he got his first and
- 23:07all this back and forth, but what he ends up doing on the episode is going
- 23:09through all the amenities, or I guess lack thereof on those early vipers.
- 23:15And he lays out in the gr his garage floor at one point.
- 23:18He's like, this is all the stuff I gotta do to make sure I don't get wet.
- 23:21Right.
- 23:21And, and he lays it all.
- 23:22It's really cool.
- 23:23And you're, and I'm looking at it going, this is like all
- 23:25old British Roadster stuff.
- 23:27So it's kind of neat that they kept that.
- 23:29And eventually, obviously that went away.
- 23:31But you said the manual transmissions.
- 23:33And the question I got from somebody recently was what manual is in the
- 23:37Viper, in the Gen Ones and twos?
- 23:39It's a T 56.
- 23:40Sorry.
- 23:41In the Gen threes it's also a T 56 and then the gen fours and
- 23:44Gen fives use the T 60 sixties.
- 23:46Okay.
- 23:46So no ZF transmissions, not the Mercedes based or anything like that.
- 23:50Mm-hmm.
- 23:50They're all tremi.
- 23:51All tremi.
- 23:52Nice.
- 23:53A lot of guys will find Viper Transit and use 'em for like V eight Chevys
- 23:58and other types of conversions or converting the, the truck, which
- 24:00we'll talk about in a little bit.
- 24:02In terms of chassis, obviously that evolved, especially
- 24:04during the Mercedes period.
- 24:05They got really kind of big, you know, things like that.
- 24:08But is there anything that is a, a heritage piece that has made it
- 24:12from the first Gen Viper all the way through the last ACRs in 20 16, 20 17?
- 24:17So, like I said, like the big thing about all of that was they wanted
- 24:21to keep the car as raw as possible.
- 24:23Yeah.
- 24:23Some people wanted to put automatics in 'em from corporate and all that other
- 24:26fun jazz, and they basically said, no, they have to stay manual, they have
- 24:30to stay the V 10, they have to stay rear wheel drive, we, and we want to
- 24:33keep it as race car esque as possible.
- 24:35Right.
- 24:36So they wanted to keep the nannies off the cars and make these things be able to
- 24:40be track monsters at the end of the day.
- 24:41And then if you broke down, you'd be easy enough to fix
- 24:44at the track if you needed to.
- 24:45The thing that really held true, the car the whole time was.
- 24:48The fact that they only came in manual transmissions
- 24:51through the entire generations.
- 24:53When they switched from the Gen four to gen five, they went, well,
- 24:57basically a three year gap in 2010 to 2013 where SRT took over and
- 25:01they were no longer dodge fiber.
- 25:02They were SRT Viper.
- 25:04At that point, they scrapped.
- 25:05I mean that, it didn't look anything like the resume.
- 25:07They modeled the body off of the original gen two GTS coup.
- 25:12They did the swooping, you know, hood again, that was the exotic,
- 25:15sideways opening one rather than this garbage one that opens up, you
- 25:18know, four the boring regular hood.
- 25:21I don't know.
- 25:21I love those ones.
- 25:22I got to do a ride along with Eugene at one of our events at
- 25:25New Jersey Motor Sports Park.
- 25:26Unfortunately, we had a little incident where the, uh, oil cap was not screwed on
- 25:30all the way after he filled it back up and it blew smoke and oil all over the engine.
- 25:35I, uh, legitimately thought I was dying because NACR and he was going
- 25:38faster than I'd ever been on the track.
- 25:41All of a sudden we're seeing black smoke everywhere and I'm just in
- 25:44the passenger seat, like, cool, this guy's about to kill me.
- 25:46That's cool.
- 25:47And I, I played a little bit too much GTA five gta, and I, I, I was like, I know
- 25:51what black smoke coming outta the engine.
- 25:53Me.
- 25:53That means the car's about to explode in about, you know,
- 25:55five seconds we pull over.
- 25:57It's just oil and everything, but.
- 25:58I was incredibly memorable.
- 26:00Ride along and I'm holding a spot.
- 26:02The, the poster you have right behind you, that one with white
- 26:05stripes, that'll be the next one.
- 26:06Might take me a little longer, but I'll be happy with this one.
- 26:09But they're gorgeous.
- 26:11But like you were saying too, they wanted to try to keep the clamshell hoods,
- 26:14especially as the design changed through the years and that was again, something
- 26:18else that they kind of tried to keep.
- 26:19But at the end of the day, even if you look at all vipers, the
- 26:22front ends, in my opinion, all have that kind of same mean design.
- 26:27The headlights are a little bit different.
- 26:28I mean, they didn't, the gen fives and the gen twos are like, to me, the Gen
- 26:32five is the new version of the gen two and which is one of the things that
- 26:35I really like about those designs.
- 26:37So as far as things that made it through all the years, I think
- 26:40it's really just like trans motor.
- 26:43And they kept, they tried their hardest to keep the rawness of those cars.
- 26:47If the Gen five is the new gen two, does that mean that the
- 26:50gen three is the new copperhead?
- 26:53So let's talk about the copperhead for a second, shall we?
- 26:56That was a slight jab that like the Mamba edition.
- 26:59So there's a million additions.
- 27:01You mean I had all these special ones that I'm like, what's
- 27:03special about the copperhead?
- 27:04That's what I wanted to ask.
- 27:05Let's let Mike fill us in on what the copperhead is.
- 27:08The copperhead was either a Cooper or convertible, and depending on the year,
- 27:14it would have a dash plaque, it would have orange stitching, it would have that
- 27:18copper color, and it would have those five spoke polished chrome looking wheels.
- 27:24Outside of that, it was like a badge that they put on it, just like a
- 27:28lot of the other cars they did.
- 27:30That's true of the Viper.
- 27:32I'm gonna stretch.
- 27:33Oh, okay.
- 27:33Your imagination, right.
- 27:35Where are we at?
- 27:35We are at the concept.
- 27:38Dodge Copperhead, if you recall, which was developed in 1997 as a one-off
- 27:44prototype, as a variant of the Viper.
- 27:47It has a very squareish front end.
- 27:49Looks like something out of Batman.
- 27:50The animated series, if you search, I've actually seen it.
- 27:53There is apparently like one, and that's why I joke that the gen three is the
- 27:59new version of the Copperhead because it has kind of similar body lines, right?
- 28:03If you think about it.
- 28:04Yeah.
- 28:04I mean the tail lights look exactly same, hideous.
- 28:07There's also this front end looks like a, uh, not PC
- 28:11cruiser, a uh, Plymouth Crowler.
- 28:13Only it has.
- 28:14It's not open wheel.
- 28:15It's got fenders.
- 28:16Exactly.
- 28:17And there's a third little car, and I mean little that you add to this
- 28:21equation known as the demon, which we talked about in an earlier episode,
- 28:26which was designed as a Miata killer and also had related articles.
- 28:31And also has very viper like lines to it as well.
- 28:35So that's kind of another kind of sub variant of the Viper family there.
- 28:38If we're playing a little bit of Viper Family Tree Viper trivia.
- 28:42Speaking of that, Mike, what are some other great little interesting
- 28:46tidbits of information or stories or anecdotes about the Viper and its
- 28:49lineage that you'd like to share?
- 28:51So one of my favorites.
- 28:53It has to be the turn signals on the gen ones and twos because we've always talked
- 28:58about how they didn't have enough money to be really building these cars, right?
- 29:02They had to cut corners as best they could to make things cheap and make this
- 29:05car happen because they all wanted it to.
- 29:07They all had the passion to, but how are they gonna do it?
- 29:10And they were originally needing to make the tooling for turn
- 29:12signals for these bumpers.
- 29:14Basically, Chrysler came back and said, well, it's gonna be 250,000
- 29:17aside to make the tooling, and then you can make all the lights you need.
- 29:20Well, Roy said, that's not happening.
- 29:23Go down to the trailer store and find a good set of lights that will
- 29:26fit and look good in this bumper.
- 29:28So they went down, they found a set of trailer lights and the turn signal
- 29:32lights in the front bumpers of the gen one and twos are actually trailer lights.
- 29:37So they took the trailer lights, used the tooling from them.
- 29:40Saved a crap ton of money so they could put it elsewhere.
- 29:42Plastic parts bin.
- 29:44Oh yes.
- 29:44Very much parts.
- 29:45PIN card to excess.
- 29:46I mean, even my key and the key fob are the exact same ones out
- 29:50of a Dodge Caravan from that year.
- 29:52The vent identical, I mean I looked it up, I, I'm sure you have seen how
- 29:56much these things are cheap plastic.
- 29:58So that first viper I got, everything was broken.
- 30:01Like every interior piece of cracked was so brittle.
- 30:03Yep.
- 30:03And trucks did not hold up to 15 years of even gr.
- 30:08I don't know if it was garage kept or not, but the interior is
- 30:10not what you buy this far for.
- 30:12It's definitely minimalist.
- 30:13That correct at that.
- 30:15But it sounds fantastic, even if it does sound a little bit like
- 30:19the old Cub cadet tractor I used to mow my parents lawn with.
- 30:23It still sounds pretty good.
- 30:25I, like, I I, the first time driving, I'm in six gear and I, I rev it.
- 30:29I just hear and I'm just like, okay, that's not what I was
- 30:33expecting this to sound like.
- 30:34I'm not, I can't say I'm disappointed or anything, but Well, hey, six gear.
- 30:37You're probably at like a thousand RPMs, so 90 miles an hour, 1,750 RPMs.
- 30:44It's wild.
- 30:45I'm like, this thing, it's got so much to give, I mean a ton of displacement.
- 30:49And, uh, you know, first order of business, I gotta look for an exhaust.
- 30:52Actually, Mike, you gotta gimme suggestions even if it's later on.
- 30:55I gotta know Corsa Barilla, like, well, what do I get for this?
- 30:58Because Barilla whatcha talking about
- 31:02That's a brand I, I, I swear I saw it on a form that's available on the bi version.
- 31:09I was surprised.
- 31:10Pipe, no, I was surprised when we had it up on the lift that
- 31:14the pipes, they went down.
- 31:16Crossed around the back and came out.
- 31:18So the, the left exit pipe coming outta the side here is actually coming from
- 31:21the right side of the engine, and it crosses behind the passenger foot,
- 31:24like behind your seats, which to me seems like a ton of excess weight.
- 31:28A ton of excess.
- 31:29You know, it, it just seems like they could have straight piped,
- 31:31like coming right outta the side.
- 31:33I'm sure there's EPA regulations and stuff, but yeah, I don't
- 31:36know if you have any insight on that that came down to sound.
- 31:40I'm sure if you've ever driven that thing in the summer, it gets very
- 31:43hot in that cabin because you're completely surrounded by exhaust.
- 31:46I definitely have a burn on my leg to prove that.
- 31:49Oh, you've got the snake bite.
- 31:51Oh, is that what that thing I've been bitching.
- 31:53You've been bit by the snake because you reached the leg out
- 31:56and you burn it on the side sill.
- 31:59Oh man.
- 31:59So, so this is actually really good tips for understanding how
- 32:04the viper's built what you should look for if you're buying one.
- 32:07Obviously Andrew just went through this experience and I think he, it
- 32:10was a trial by fire in some cases.
- 32:13So let's talk about if you're shopping for a viper.
- 32:16Mike, what should you be looking out for?
- 32:18What are some telltale signs?
- 32:20What are things that are known to go wrong?
- 32:21You know, some things that people might be afraid, oh, it's got that issue.
- 32:25I don't want to deal with that.
- 32:26Or it's something super simple.
- 32:27It's actually really cheap to fix.
- 32:29So let's kind of go with some of these buyer's tips.
- 32:31On a viper, depending on the generation, is gonna really depend on what the
- 32:35uh, ohs or the things that were problematic from 22 to even up to 2017.
- 32:40The oil cooler lines almost always leak.
- 32:42It's just a matter of time.
- 32:44They don't leak bad.
- 32:45I haven't seen any stock ones like blow out yet, but it is something
- 32:48that you eventually need to address.
- 32:49Again, nothing that's too big of a deal.
- 32:51You should worry about oil levels.
- 32:54If you go look at a guy's car and the oil is below the low.
- 32:57Point, maybe you should steer away from it.
- 32:59Again, it can be fixed.
- 33:00Anything on these cars can be fixed.
- 33:01That's the nice part about being built out of part spins.
- 33:04You just have to figure out where the parts actually came from
- 33:06and cross to something else.
- 33:08Like on the gen fours, the rear lift hatch, right?
- 33:11There's a button in the trunk to open the rear trunk.
- 33:14The viper part is like $200.
- 33:16You get the same exact button out of a Chrysler minivan for $15 on Amazon.
- 33:20There's a lot of many parts on this sports car.
- 33:22What?
- 33:22What's going on in here?
- 33:23Oh yes, you'd be surprised.
- 33:25So it really just comes down to the generation, right?
- 33:27Like the gen ones, they were so rudimentary, there
- 33:30wasn't any creature comfort.
- 33:31So like the dashboard gets super sticky because they just wear
- 33:35out unfortunately, and they get scratched up and just not look great.
- 33:38So that could be something that would steer somebody away, but again,
- 33:41they could be refinished and redone.
- 33:42But the gen ones were.
- 33:44Honestly, really solid as far as that stuff goes.
- 33:46The suspension was just a little bit more rudimentary, so it was easier to
- 33:50essentially kill yourself in because if you didn't know what you were
- 33:53doing, you could hurt yourself because again, no nannies, none of that.
- 33:56So the gen ones were pretty solid.
- 33:57Unfortunately, though, ethanol and the fuel nowadays.
- 34:00Eats away at the fuel hoses, inside the fuel pump, which then eventually
- 34:04causes them to split on the gen ones, not the end of the world.
- 34:08Fuel pump assembly comes out, you rebuild it and everything's okay.
- 34:11Again.
- 34:11So the gen ones, the big thing to look out for is when you turn that
- 34:14key and you crank it over, if it takes a little bit to crank over,
- 34:18it probably needs a fuel pressure regulator because it's not holding the
- 34:21fuel up into the rails and your fuel system probably needs to be rebuilt.
- 34:25That's the biggest issue that I've seen so far on the gen ones.
- 34:28Outside of like is that head gaskets will eventually go, but
- 34:31from a 92, are you including like the ones up to like the 2002?
- 34:35Depends.
- 34:35The Gen one and two to me are so similar that it's hard for me to differentiate.
- 34:39I When does it become gen?
- 34:41Is it 1997 that it became Gen two or 1996?
- 34:44No, when the GTS came out in 96, it became the second generation.
- 34:48Okay.
- 34:48Depending on where they were in that year is gonna depend on the
- 34:53kind of fuel pressure regulators that were in the fuel buckets.
- 34:56But it's mostly the gen ones that I've seen all the issues
- 34:58with, at least thus fall.
- 34:59Is that because there was a changeover in the minivans as well?
- 35:02They went from the caravan to the Grand Caravan or something?
- 35:05Is that why it changed?
- 35:06Um, so the regulators are actually the same as ones that are out of
- 35:10like a Dodge Durango and like the fuel floats for the gen ones are the
- 35:15same out of the Dodge Grand Caravan.
- 35:17I can buy the whole assembly for 80 bucks, but if I find a fuel float out
- 35:21of a viper, I'm gonna spend like 300.
- 35:23Oh geez.
- 35:24As far as the Gen two stuff goes, oil cooler lines were solid.
- 35:27The big things to look out for now that they're old are the cooling system
- 35:31hoses just 'cause rubber wears out.
- 35:33The power steering pump pulleys are huge because they were plastic.
- 35:36It's plastic onto mounted onto a metal shaft.
- 35:39It separates, it splits, it cracks, and then now you lose your serpentine belt,
- 35:43your cooling system, and you're stuck on the side of the road and you're pissed
- 35:46off all because the $10 part broke.
- 35:49But overall, like the gen twos were pretty solid outside of like a
- 35:52couple, you know, maintenance things.
- 35:54They didn't really have too many problems.
- 35:55Bottom S were pretty solid.
- 35:57They eventually switched over in 2000 to like the cream puff motors
- 36:01where they switched out the cams and they got rid of the forged pistons.
- 36:05When they switched over to that stuff, they didn't have any, at least from what
- 36:07I've seen so far, they haven't had any like bearing issues or anything like that.
- 36:11They just changed the cam up a little bit to meet some EPA stuff.
- 36:14But overall, the gen twos are really solid, so that's kind of nice.
- 36:17The one thing to look out for too, as far as paint goes on the gen twos is
- 36:21the side cells are aluminum, right?
- 36:24So they corrode from the backside, then bubble the paint, and then like rust
- 36:28through, people think it's all from heat.
- 36:30Well, it's not actually all from heat, it's from corrosion on the backside.
- 36:34But everyone says online, oh, it's because the cats are so hot it plays
- 36:37a part, but it's not necessarily true.
- 36:38The early cars, were they ahead of their time?
- 36:41They were at least OBD one, correct?
- 36:43Or not?
- 36:44Early model Gen one stuff is OBD one.
- 36:46As soon as they switched over to 96 when everything had to go O2, it's OB D two.
- 36:51Okay.
- 36:51I mean, it's rudimentary OB two, but it's OB two.
- 36:54You can hook a scanner up and read some things and on the later cars, the three
- 36:58fours and fives, some buying tips.
- 36:59If you're looking at this, especially the threes now that you know, Andrew's already
- 37:02gotten his, it was, it was a whole thing.
- 37:04I've been looking forward to these my whole life.
- 37:05I had a Lotus Elite tracked it for a year and then you know, COVID happened
- 37:10and used cars started skyrocketing and the first thing to go up were those
- 37:14specialty cars and I looked at the price releases go up 40, 50% and I took it.
- 37:19I got rid of that and that's when I knew it was like I had to have
- 37:21a viper and the first Viper I looked at in person was a 2002.
- 37:25So Jen.
- 37:26To final edition Coop Red with White Stripes.
- 37:29It was the car that I had a poster of as a kid, unfortunately did not work out.
- 37:33The guy had three in his garage.
- 37:35Young guy.
- 37:36He had bought three.
- 37:36He knew the market was going up.
- 37:38He had a blue with white stripes.
- 37:39He had a red RT 10 gen one, and he had this gen two final
- 37:43edition they bought from a guy.
- 37:44I was so upset because he had the title in someone else's name and
- 37:47I went to get financing and they wouldn't follow through on it.
- 37:49You were mentioning the fuel pump getting messed up and even the one that he had on
- 37:53a battery maintainer, it wouldn't start.
- 37:55It just like turned over 10, 15 seconds, which is excruciatingly
- 37:59a long amount of time.
- 38:00Yeah, and it finally ran, but I ended up with this Gen three
- 38:04off of cars and bids.com.
- 38:06After buying another Gen three from a Florida dealer who told me
- 38:11this car is in good condition, I, I talked to him on the phone, I see
- 38:14it on Autotrader and it gets here.
- 38:15And then, you know, we were kind of texting about this one the other day
- 38:18because I gotta, you know, I gotta do this front control arms, but this other
- 38:21one that I got, oh my God, it was trash.
- 38:24Cool tank is cracked, so it wasn't even holding cooling.
- 38:26So it shows up with a check engine light on and I think, oh,
- 38:29you know, it just needs cooling.
- 38:30Fill the cooling up.
- 38:31It drains out within like a hundred miles of driving.
- 38:35So I get it to my buddy's shop, put it on a list.
- 38:38He's got no O2 sensors, a straight pipe exhausted shooting flames out the side,
- 38:41which I must admit was the coolest fucking thing ever, and it sounded great.
- 38:45But downstream, O2 sensors removed.
- 38:47You know, they put resistors in, both of them burned out or
- 38:49the right side, one burned out.
- 38:51He goes underneath and he's starting to rub everything and there's oil everywhere.
- 38:54We're like, what is this?
- 38:55Well, it was either power steering fluid.
- 38:57Oil or coolant couldn't discern what it was.
- 39:01There was three types of fluid in there that within five days of owning
- 39:04it, six days, the clutch just went to the floor one morning when I went to
- 39:07start it and I couldn't get it in or outta gear, turn on a first game chunk.
- 39:10But yeah, I got rid of it.
- 39:11The guy took it back, he paid me for it and uh, I ended up
- 39:14winning this one on, you know, the officer set a couple days later.
- 39:17I love it.
- 39:18I think a part of me will always be disappointed and get that
- 39:21gen two, gen twos, arguably.
- 39:22I know Eric had, he had a lot to say to me when I was, when I told
- 39:26him I got the gen three because.
- 39:27Yeah, it's uh, it's Mercedes.
- 39:29It's crap.
- 39:29It's parts spin car.
- 39:30And uh, you know, I, I love the gen twos as much as anyone else.
- 39:33I'm still happy with it, but, you know, we're gonna be talking in the future
- 39:36because there's gonna be, I'm sure many things that need to be replaced.
- 39:40He's saying is he wants try, he's gonna try to make your Gen three cool.
- 39:44It's, it's a hard task, but he's gonna try to make it cool.
- 39:48Alright, turbo supercharger.
- 39:49What we doing?
- 39:50Uh, let's start smaller first.
- 39:53Like you can make a good amount of power with like heads and cam out
- 39:56of those cars, you know, I mean, what you started out with 5 0 5.
- 39:59Our last head and CAM package put down six 14 to the wheels, which is technically
- 40:03a little bit more power than a gen five.
- 40:05Okay.
- 40:06So it's just, it's basically making the changes that they
- 40:08did for the gen four in 2008.
- 40:11And was it bigger intake or you'd say just the cams, bolt them on,
- 40:14still trying to learn, that's all.
- 40:16Basically.
- 40:16That's okay.
- 40:16I can teach you.
- 40:17I'm fine with that.
- 40:18So basically with like the heads and cams stuff, we port and polish the heads.
- 40:21We go larger intake and exhaust valves.
- 40:24So it flows a lot more air.
- 40:25It goes headers, exhaust.
- 40:27We keep the stock intake.
- 40:28Stock injectors.
- 40:29Would you do?
- 40:29Upgrade the fuel pump, but outside of that you add those couple different things and
- 40:33you get to put down a bunch more power.
- 40:35That is the recipe for most, I assume you got American, you gotta tune it.
- 40:38Yeah, of course You have to tune it.
- 40:39Yeah.
- 40:40I got a ZL one that sent my track car recently and I bought it from a guy
- 40:44who had a intake, a pulley in exhaust.
- 40:47No tune.
- 40:48And I took that shit to New Jersey Motorist Park and threw
- 40:50codes on every session for fuel pump issues, this and that.
- 40:54And I, and I finally take it through shop and the guy goes, this is the stock ECU.
- 40:58And I'm like, what?
- 40:58He was like, that guy put all that stuff into it and then drove it like a grandpa
- 41:02and never once had an issue with it.
- 41:04Running lean.
- 41:05I gotta find that on the track.
- 41:07So now I'm, now I'm savvy.
- 41:08Now I know to get stuff tuned, but, well, I'm happy you're learning
- 41:10some things through time here.
- 41:12As we move into those Gen threes, obviously you see more and more
- 41:15Bosch like stuff because of this portion of Chrysler's history.
- 41:19Daimler, you know, Mercedes had taken over the company, so you probably see a
- 41:23lot more German type of parts in there.
- 41:25And then obviously later they sold to fiat when the Gem fours and fives came out.
- 41:29So then it was FCA at that point and, and that's when the redesigns come in.
- 41:33And I will say across the board at Chrysler, I thought Fiat did an excellent
- 41:36job redesigning cars inside and out.
- 41:39But what we haven't talked about yet is what to look out for if you were
- 41:42buying one of these later edition Vipers, the gen four or Gen five.
- 41:46So what's on the buyer's guide there?
- 41:48The typical thing to really look for on Gen four is the oil cooler lines.
- 41:52Like we've discussed, gen fours were pretty solid, and they do
- 41:55have issues with window regulators.
- 41:57The window regulators through most of the generations were kind of crappy.
- 42:00The glue they used weren't, wasn't good.
- 42:02All that fun stuff.
- 42:03So Gen fours were fortunate enough to get the swinging pickup upgrade from the
- 42:07Gen threes, so it didn't have as many oiling issues when you were on the track.
- 42:11So overall, the Gen fours were pretty solid as far as that stuff goes.
- 42:15Until you, there were certain modifications that people could do that.
- 42:18Would screw things up.
- 42:19But as far as stock goes, they were overall really solid.
- 42:23As long as you weren't gonna be having misfires or anything like that, which
- 42:26you know, you should change your spark plug wires out and all that stuff.
- 42:30We as car guys know that that's normal maintenance overall, the
- 42:33gen fours were really solid.
- 42:34They didn't really seem to have any bearing issues, of course, unless
- 42:37you were really hard tracking 'em or running 'em low on oil.
- 42:40The, just the big thing where really the oil cooler lines on those and the
- 42:43window regulators were super common.
- 42:45And of course the typical interior issues that all of them had, but overall, they
- 42:49didn't were one of the better ones.
- 42:51Yeah, the dash that cracks and pieces that fade and peel and
- 42:56then you need that stuff restored.
- 42:57But the gen fours are overall pretty solid.
- 42:59The subwoofer, oh my God, I, you, you love that.
- 43:02I thought it was blown.
- 43:03The box is so shaky that even when I, I took as much apart as I could and
- 43:08I. Foam in there and it still rattles and I go online to see how to fix it.
- 43:13You gotta remove the whole piece that goes underneath the door, still up
- 43:17behind the car and covers the box to get in there and stop the rattling.
- 43:21And it involves taking the seats out and this and that.
- 43:23And I'm like, if you have any suggestions on how to make that sub
- 43:26for enclosures, stop sounding like literally a busted old, you know,
- 43:30Honda Civic can tell you exactly.
- 43:32I love it.
- 43:32Would how to fix it.
- 43:33Alright.
- 43:34Sounds like it's probably boring.
- 43:35We could talk about that offline, but you know, I'll greatly appreciate
- 43:39it because man, I'm trying to listen to my base, get amped up to the gym
- 43:42driving somewhere and I'm like, all right, base down to negative eight.
- 43:46And it's still rattling.
- 43:47I mean, who needs a stereo?
- 43:50Who needs a stereo?
- 43:51When you have a big, when I can listen to that truck engine that,
- 43:54that, that beautiful tractor.
- 43:56It's a moan thing.
- 43:57It's more like woo.
- 43:59But that's okay.
- 44:00So the gen fives are still pretty new, so I'm assuming they haven't
- 44:03lived long enough lives yet to really come up with some major problems.
- 44:08You know, if you were buying one, right?
- 44:09So there was some major problems.
- 44:11Um, there was, believe it or not, it was common, but not that
- 44:15common sort of problem, right?
- 44:16Everyone online, if they had a bearing problem, everyone had a bearing problem.
- 44:19A lot of guys were having bearing issues.
- 44:22But the other issue of that is, is if you don't monitor your motor
- 44:25oil, you probably are gonna have motor issues or a bearing issue.
- 44:28If you let the car sit for three or four months and all the oil drains back into
- 44:32the pan and you start that thing up, it's a dry start and it's gonna wear the
- 44:36bearings out more and more over time.
- 44:38On top of it, they switched over to a zero 20 or a zero 40 for the
- 44:43stock motor oil, which I think was like a marketing aspect 'cause they
- 44:47were gonna start using Pennzoil.
- 44:48But when you talk to the engineers and everything else.
- 44:51All the cars that leave my shop get at least five 40 in them, if not 1540 or
- 44:561550 depending on what the application is because that zero eight oil is
- 45:00just too thin and it can cause some of that premature bearing wear over time.
- 45:04And the bearing wear was pretty big on those.
- 45:06In 17, there was some like hush hush things that were kind of
- 45:09happening with some of the diffs where the wrong fluid may have been
- 45:12used and it was blowing diffs up.
- 45:15Of course it was all covered under warranty, but if, you know, if you
- 45:17buy a 17 and there's 200 miles on it, change your diff fluid because.
- 45:22You don't wanna blow a diff up just in case that's kind of a bad thing.
- 45:25A little bit more common issues that guys had, whereas the bearing issues on
- 45:29the gen fives and like the diff issues.
- 45:32But outside of that, there hasn't, at least from what I've seen thus far from
- 45:36all the collection management I've been doing, I haven't seen too many issues
- 45:39with the Gen fives outside of the typical, Hey, your oil cooler line's
- 45:43leaking, or We're just gonna change all the fluids out and all that jazz.
- 45:47So I know this sounds like a redundant question, but it's a
- 45:49professional opinion question here.
- 45:51Yeah.
- 45:51So to kind of wrap up this thought, because there are five different
- 45:54generations of the Viper and they all have their idiosyncrasies and everything else,
- 45:58but you, Mike, if you were gonna recommend somebody buy a Viper today, their first
- 46:02Viper, Andrew doesn't get a vote on this one, the best year, maybe the worst
- 46:07year, Targa or Coop, what would you pick?
- 46:10What would you tell somebody?
- 46:11I would pick a early model gen two.
- 46:14So the early models were 96 to 99.
- 46:17That would be what I get into for a couple different reasons.
- 46:20One, it was the Iconic Viper, so even if it's not blue and white, it
- 46:23still was like the iconic Viper two.
- 46:26I'm six four and I don't fit in these cars as it is.
- 46:29The gen twos I fit in the most I can actually see out of the windshield, even
- 46:33though my eyes are up towards the top, when I drive the later generations, I
- 46:36have to duck my head down so I can see through the windshield and see the lights.
- 46:40So for me, the size of the car matters and the Gen two to me personally
- 46:45has the most amount of space.
- 46:46And in my personal opinion, I like the gen twos the most because they
- 46:50also seem to be the most reliable.
- 46:51As long as you maintain them well enough.
- 46:53And if you ever want to go add more power, the gen two, gen threes are
- 46:57really easy to add power without going turboed and everything else.
- 47:00And it gives you still that raw feeling.
- 47:02I'll never forget when I first started driving, when he would let me take his
- 47:05Mustang out, my dad always told me this traction control button, if you turn
- 47:09it off and it doesn't kill you, I will.
- 47:12So like as a kid, when I was really young, I asked, what's that button do dad?
- 47:16He turns it off and we go through an intersection freaking sideways, and
- 47:20he goes, that's what that does and you will never turn that button off.
- 47:25And ironically enough, now I get to test drive vipers that are.
- 47:29600 to 1200 horsepower that don't have any traction control.
- 47:33So I need to know what I'm doing.
- 47:34Let's do this.
- 47:35'cause Andrew has evolved a lot.
- 47:37As of many of our members in our audience will attest.
- 47:41You know, he's grown a lot as his DIY shade tree mechanic.
- 47:44You know, he moved from, let's say, production cars.
- 47:47I mean, he had the, he had the Lotus, which is considerably an exotic,
- 47:50but hey, it's a Celica engine.
- 47:52So we can, we can live with that cheaper.
- 47:54But you move into this super, super absolute cheapest, you move
- 47:56into this supercar territory, things change immediately.
- 48:00There's tax, like we joke about the, you know, the M tax and the, you know,
- 48:04the Porsche tax and things like that.
- 48:05So you have the cost, like you said, of viper parts, but then
- 48:09there's also, you have to have a specialty, quote unquote, mechanic
- 48:13work on these vehicles, or is that.
- 48:15A myth, are these cars actually workable by the average, let's say, guy that
- 48:22knows how to turn a wrencher to like how hard is it to work on a viper?
- 48:27I know I sent Mike this picture, but that's exactly what I was trying
- 48:31to talk to him about because I'm looking at stuff and I'm like, cool.
- 48:33It needs a new, uh, sway bar, InLinks, it needs a new control arm.
- 48:38And I got another shop to quote me, $800 per control arm.
- 48:42He didn't even quote me on the sway bar InLinks.
- 48:45Looked him up two 50 a piece.
- 48:47And that is a what?
- 48:48$50 part?
- 48:49My buddy's got an SRS My buddy Andrew, who's at the track, he just had to replace
- 48:52his, and I'm like, he, he was doing his, uh, coil overs and he broke a sway bar
- 48:57in like, he got it overnighted for like, I think he said 30 bucks, 40 bucks.
- 49:01You can get the end links on.
- 49:01I'm looking at for like 30 bucks.
- 49:03Alright, once again, we're gonna be having another conversation soon,
- 49:06so I really gotta, we're glad we gotta get this rapport before I
- 49:09started asking you to work on my car.
- 49:12Well, we're also gonna check with our friends over at Powerflex to see if
- 49:15they make anything for the Viper too.
- 49:17That's a one and done solution.
- 49:18When we go down that road, I mean, you absolutely know within the next year
- 49:22I'm coming to you to do the headers.
- 49:24Everything, dude.
- 49:25Yeah.
- 49:25600 horsepower.
- 49:26That's good.
- 49:27500. Nah, that's not enough.
- 49:29That's, that's not enough.
- 49:30We gotta make as much as, you know, what I'll do is I'll get that gen
- 49:33four hood with the bigger vent and after, after I get the 600 horsepower,
- 49:38because then I'm not opposed, then I can be like, well it is a 2006.
- 49:41It has the hood, but it also has the power a little bit more.
- 49:45There you go.
- 49:46You got me.
- 49:46You got me excited about that.
- 49:47So for those of us that aren't ballers, like Andrew, going back to my original
- 49:52question, if I don't have kids, but if I wanted to turn wrenches, kidding.
- 49:59If I wanted to turn wrenches on my own, Viper, how difficult would it be?
- 50:03My personal side says, oh yeah, they're really hard because
- 50:06that's what I do for a living.
- 50:07But honestly, at the end of the day, they're very easy cars, right?
- 50:10Like to put it in perspective, if you had to change an oil pan gasket at
- 50:14the track, you could easily do it.
- 50:16They're simple push rod motors, and a lot of guys know through the
- 50:19years how push rod motors work.
- 50:21The timing is literally the crankshaft and the camshaft.
- 50:24You line those two up, it's two pieces.
- 50:26It's not four or five pieces that you have to line up with belts and crap.
- 50:30So they are pretty easy to work on and most things you
- 50:33don't really need a lift for.
- 50:35Again, they make it easier.
- 50:36The shocks come out pretty easy.
- 50:38The shocks are two bolts unless you're going to like remote
- 50:41reservoirs and everything else.
- 50:42Overall, they're pretty easy to work on.
- 50:44There's definitely some nuances that like it would help if
- 50:47you would ask some questions.
- 50:49So if there are people that do work on their own car and they want to call me
- 50:52and I can try to direct them in the right direction, I'm more than happy to do that.
- 50:56If you wanna work on your own stuff.
- 50:57I actually kind of encourage it because again, it keeps the comradery
- 51:02together and people really, some guys really like to wrench on their own
- 51:05cars and it's really not that hard.
- 51:07At the end of the day.
- 51:08I also joke around and say, it's like big boy Legos.
- 51:10Like if you pull one motor apart, you can put one together.
- 51:14It's like as, as long as you put it back the same way it came in, then you're okay.
- 51:18Well, I'm secretly asking, knowing that Andrew's gonna come to my garage and
- 51:22inevitably I'm gonna end up working on his Viper when you, when you can't, Mike.
- 51:25So I was was gonna, you said, you said you were, you were down, but you said, I've
- 51:29never worked on a Viper and I would like to, and, and for everyone listening, I
- 51:33wanted you to know how good of a guy Mike is because I had an issue with this one.
- 51:37Now I had an issue with the other one too, but this one, two days after I
- 51:39got it, I go, you know, I take my girl out, we go to brunch, driving back.
- 51:44Starts bucking like crazy.
- 51:46And it happened the day before and I was like, oh, cool, something's
- 51:49gonna go wrong, but I'm gonna ignore it until I actually know what it
- 51:51is because no lights, whatever.
- 51:53And I get strained on the side of the highway and I throw codes and it ended
- 51:58up being the crankshaft position sensor.
- 52:00I go online nothing.
- 52:01I can't find anything.
- 52:02I found a foreign version of the, uh, service manual, one page at a time.
- 52:08No way to search it.
- 52:08And I'm lost.
- 52:09I can find a camshaft physician sensor, but I couldn't find what to do.
- 52:12Mike, literally, he goes, oh yeah, I know what to do.
- 52:15He sends me a PDF of the 400 page of service manual and he goes,
- 52:18I'm gonna have her on a list tomorrow, send you a picture.
- 52:20Fortunately, that night I was able to replace it, $15 part at,
- 52:23uh, AutoZone, but it got the car running again and it was easy to do.
- 52:28Once I found the part, it was a little hard to get to.
- 52:30He was so helpful.
- 52:31'cause I, I have a buddy at the gym who has a gen two.
- 52:34He gave me another Viper mechanics number first, and that
- 52:37guy, he wasn't really helpful.
- 52:38Like, he was like, oh, super easy.
- 52:40It's like changing your oil, which clearly was like a jab at like,
- 52:44you should be able to do this.
- 52:46And I'm like, bro, I can't find the sensor.
- 52:47Like I, I'm brand new to this car.
- 52:49It's on the rear side that.
- 52:51Mike helped me and, and because of Mike's help, I was able to do it that night.
- 52:54And Mike, I appreciate that so much because I got the car
- 52:57running and I got to get that.
- 52:58Yeah.
- 52:58You're saying the camaraderie between people that work on their cars.
- 53:01It's awesome because I do so much work at Eric's house, mainly because he's got the
- 53:04awesome race deck floor and quick jack.
- 53:07But mainly because he is the most knowledgeable now, maybe the second
- 53:11most on this call, but he is the most knowledgeable guy I know working on cars.
- 53:15He puts the engines in other cars, he can do everything.
- 53:17And so I won't deny that If I have anything big to do, I'm
- 53:20coming to Eric's house to do it.
- 53:21I just trust him to help me.
- 53:23That's fine.
- 53:23Just gimme a call.
- 53:24Like I said, I wanna add a viper to my resume, whether I own one or work on one.
- 53:28I'm gonna, I'm gonna get it on there so it's all good.
- 53:30Right.
- 53:31Well that being said, cool.
- 53:32You wanna, you wanna do some control arms with me because
- 53:35hey man, not gonna pay the shop.
- 53:36They quoted me 12 labor.
- 53:39I got the presses man, I just did a set of ones the other day.
- 53:42They quoted you 1200 for the labor, $800 for each control
- 53:47arm, not the sway bar inland.
- 53:49And they gave me a printout because once again I bought this car.
- 53:51The guy said it was perfect.
- 53:53We get it on the lift and there's oil everywhere coming from the control arm.
- 53:56So I contact guy, he's a super rich guy in Florida that had like a bunch of
- 54:00Ferrari and I talked to him and he is like, he's like, oh, I'm so sorry man.
- 54:03Like.
- 54:03He offered to help me with the cost of getting that repair.
- 54:06So I told my buddy to send me a, a quote, so he might've told them to, you know,
- 54:10quote it, whatever the maximum price was.
- 54:12But I think it's fair to say that as much as I trust them, I, I don't
- 54:16think I wanna shell out the, it would be 1800 to get that done.
- 54:19That might be something if Eric, if you think you're up for it, that would
- 54:22be something to do at your house.
- 54:23Let's, let's do a little, let's do a little homework.
- 54:25We'll talk about this with Mike offline.
- 54:27Right.
- 54:28It's easy because it's easy.
- 54:29It's easy.
- 54:30We, we'll do.
- 54:31Beer, beers and foods on me.
- 54:35Just make sure when you guys get the wheel alignment done, you
- 54:37get it done at a reputable place.
- 54:39Specifically those like gen three, gen four cars, if you get it done
- 54:42at a Dodge dealership, they actually strap the car down and add driver
- 54:46and passenger weight to the car and do the wheel alignment that way.
- 54:49And that's why the wheel alignments are usually like 200 bucks.
- 54:52Oh, interesting.
- 54:53So, okay, so you can do the work and then you just gotta do the alignment
- 54:56afterwards somewhere reputable.
- 54:57Correct.
- 54:57That's easy enough.
- 54:58So that's not too bad.
- 54:58Just make sure they have an actual wiper tech and one that actually
- 55:01knows how to open the hood.
- 55:02That's the true test.
- 55:04I dunno how to open the, I know this guy named, I know this guy named Mike.
- 55:07I dunno if he's good for it, but the reason I was asking about, you know,
- 55:11how hard are they to work on and how, how easy are they to work on?
- 55:14Is that.
- 55:15In my imagination coming from Shelby's Pen, right?
- 55:20And with his influence in this, it's probably very race car-like in some
- 55:25of its setup, which means certain pieces, like the suspension, like
- 55:28you said, it's held on by two bolts.
- 55:30That's very much like, Hey, I need to be able to change this over the pit
- 55:33wall, you know, at LeMans in 30 seconds and get the driver back out on track.
- 55:37You know, that kind of thing.
- 55:38So if there's a lot of that type of engineering involved in the Viper,
- 55:42for me, that's not intimidating.
- 55:44That to me signals this is actually easier to work on than your standard
- 55:49production car where everything's jammed in there because you're trying to maximize
- 55:52people space or, or whatever it is.
- 55:54Or maybe it's over-engineered like some other vehicles are.
- 55:57So is that true or is.
- 55:58Am I on the wrong path?
- 55:591000%. 90% of the stuff you can need to fi.
- 56:03If you would need to fix it, you could fix it at the track, right?
- 56:05Like if you had to do an oil pan gasket at the track, you could do it there.
- 56:08Like it's not that hard.
- 56:09I mean, on the Gen Threes park plug wires, they put them underneath the
- 56:12intake manifold, which is rather annoying.
- 56:15You know, that's probably the more difficult things to do, but
- 56:18it's really just pull the intake and then do the wires there.
- 56:20Overall, you can fix most things to the track, right?
- 56:23Like it's a simple two bolt design on the coil overs.
- 56:26Control arms are three bolts.
- 56:28Or it's two bolts and a ball joint, so it's nothing like crazy.
- 56:31They're easy to get to.
- 56:32It's easy to pull off wheel bearings, at least on the later gens are
- 56:36all just bolted in, so it's, you can swap 'em out pretty quick.
- 56:38You know, it's the Brembo style calipers, so you just pump the
- 56:41pads in and out like you can.
- 56:43So there was a lot of things like that that they did do.
- 56:45So you could do those things on the track if you need.
- 56:48Go ahead.
- 56:48So you can track, I would love to know what you think needs to be checked,
- 56:52because when I first started getting into my car, I saw that boxer and Evo 3
- 56:5735, a bunch of like, you know, fun cars.
- 56:59And it was really not until Eric and I's mutual friend Sam, he had a,
- 57:03uh, a blue w Rx, STI that he started tracking before he got his fe racer.
- 57:08You know, I had a white Evo, he had the blue Subaru, went to the
- 57:11same gym, saw each other every day.
- 57:12Eventually it's like you the, or you the Evo, you have the Subaru.
- 57:14And you know, we ended up talking about, he got me the track and for five years
- 57:18now I've been doing all the, uh, you know, de events on what would I need to
- 57:21check on this because I can't own this and not take it to the track at least once.
- 57:25But when I was under there.
- 57:26I saw a lot of it was a Florida car, 15-year-old Dodge product.
- 57:31There's a lot of stuff in the suspension components at at least that I see
- 57:35that needs some, you know, repair.
- 57:37I would love to know what you recommend and maybe, you know,
- 57:40I'll bring it in sometime.
- 57:41We can run it over.
- 57:42Gimme the Okay.
- 57:43Or one other side question is the transmission.
- 57:45I know they're all the TREM X.
- 57:47They're pretty bulky.
- 57:48I notice a lot of like s floppiness, if I'm in third, fourth and I get on
- 57:52the gasket off, I can hear like some metal and metal in there and you know,
- 57:5620,000 miles, 15 years old, had five owners and I'm sure they beat on it.
- 58:00I don't know if it needs a new clutch or if that's just, there
- 58:03is some play in that transmission.
- 58:05It's just one thing that worries me because I don't want, you know,
- 58:07you can fix everything on the track except for the transmission.
- 58:09Yeah, that would be a, uh, a, that'd be a bad one, but, you
- 58:13know, not the end of the world.
- 58:13Could be fluids, it could be the throwout bearing could be going bad in it.
- 58:18That's like kind of typical with the older age on almost all the generations too.
- 58:22The throwout bearings wear out.
- 58:23But if you're gonna be doing track stuff, you of course you
- 58:25want to check over your shocks.
- 58:27You know, they're probably original, so they, there's a good
- 58:29chance they might be leaking.
- 58:30Check your wheel bearings, check your ball joints, control arms, sway bar links.
- 58:34Make sure all the suspension stuff looks good.
- 58:36All your brakes looks good.
- 58:37Brake fluids probably never been changed.
- 58:39Power steering fluids probably never been changed.
- 58:41The big thing on your car that I actually had an issue today is on the sum of the
- 58:45gen threes, the crank bolt can back out.
- 58:47So make sure you torque that thing down because.
- 58:51Like today I was picking up a customer car and I get to the
- 58:54shop and I hear this squeaking.
- 58:56Well, the crank bolt started to back itself out pulling the pulley off
- 58:58the crank, which would be very bad.
- 59:00You can do a lot of damage that way.
- 59:02So like check over those things.
- 59:04Make sure the oil's topped off.
- 59:05Yeah, I mean you're all your basic track stuff.
- 59:08Well, I don't wanna speak for Eric, but Eric, I'd love if we could do a road trip.
- 59:11Hop in, Eric, you drive the vi route.
- 59:13We'll visit Mike, check out the shop.
- 59:15We'll get that thing up there and uh, get it track ready.
- 59:18Hopefully.
- 59:18Get it inspected.
- 59:19And actually that, that's a really great segue that you brought this up, Andrew.
- 59:23So Mike, if you were looking at Andrew's Viper and it needs new shocks or it needs
- 59:28new this or new that, are there certain mods that he should be thinking about
- 59:33making that you know aren't outrageous?
- 59:35Like the stuff we were talking about, oh, we're gonna throw cams in it.
- 59:37You headers.
- 59:38Yeah.
- 59:38And all this kinda stuff.
- 59:39The way I look at it, and the way I was brought up was if you're gonna
- 59:41replace a factory part, try to find a racier part or a higher quality part.
- 59:46'cause a, it's gonna last you longer on the street.
- 59:48It's gonna give you maybe a different ride or different feel you're looking for.
- 59:52But is, is there something about the Viper you're like, you know, you
- 59:54should really consider modding this.
- 59:56If you were gonna track it or autocross it or something like that.
- 59:59Just solely due to the age I would replace those coil overs.
- 1:00:03It's your entry level coil over like a BC coil over or run.
- 1:00:05You probably have 14, 1500 for the set.
- 1:00:08Again, that's entry level.
- 1:00:09You can go crazy, like I just ordered a set of Penskes for like
- 1:00:11six grand for a customer's car today.
- 1:00:13You can really go all.
- 1:00:15The bushings and the control arms are probably old and
- 1:00:18maybe cracked and dry rotted.
- 1:00:20You can upgrade those with deran bushings.
- 1:00:22Like you push the old bushings out, you put the de rans in, and
- 1:00:25between that and new shocks, it transforms the way that car handles.
- 1:00:29It's totally a different animal and it's amazing.
- 1:00:31Like a close friend of mine slash car that we kind of sponsor,
- 1:00:34he's really big into autocross.
- 1:00:35It's got Penske racing shocks on it.
- 1:00:37Del Rand bushings all the way around on all four corners and he races the
- 1:00:41balls off this thing weekend after weekend at every autocross event he can.
- 1:00:45Driving that car versus a stock car is mind blowingly different.
- 1:00:49First thing I noticed, maybe in the last one I drove, that
- 1:00:51one did have leaky shocks.
- 1:00:52This one, the shocks aren't leaking, but you know, I go over the speed
- 1:00:55bumps in my neighborhood and I hear creaky noises and stuff.
- 1:00:58I uh, I noticed the car tram lines like nothing I've ever felt before.
- 1:01:03I remember my first time coming off an exit ramp, obviously pushing a
- 1:01:06little bit, coming onto the highway.
- 1:01:07No cars.
- 1:01:08But it pulled me, like in the second lane, it pulled me back into the first lane.
- 1:01:12Like, oh shit, there's something breaking.
- 1:01:14I'm ready to like, saw the wheel and like save it.
- 1:01:16I was like, oh no, that's just following the lines of the road, which 3 45.
- 1:01:22They grab, they grab everything.
- 1:01:24Yes, they do.
- 1:01:24They, they pull you all over the place and it's something to get used to.
- 1:01:28I mean, I have the Lotus with no stability or traction control and
- 1:01:31190 horsepower, 1400 less pounds.
- 1:01:34But this thing, it's a different beast and it, I've never driven anything like
- 1:01:38it as much as it's pretty easy to handle.
- 1:01:41You know, I'm gonna wait until I get it on the track before I make my pool.
- 1:01:45So if you change out the suspension and the tires, 95% of
- 1:01:49that tram railing will go away.
- 1:01:51I figured, yeah.
- 1:01:52Suspension's probably overdue.
- 1:01:5315 years is probably about time, which it's, I'm sure that I could go five
- 1:01:58years of street driving this and not have to do it, but I want to drive
- 1:02:01this car for what it was meant to do.
- 1:02:03So earlier I asked you what was the best viper if you were buying your first one.
- 1:02:07Mm-hmm.
- 1:02:08But what's the best, if you're buying a track or performance weekend
- 1:02:12warrior type of Viper, what would you recommend for somebody that
- 1:02:15wanted to do more spirited driving?
- 1:02:17Personally, if I was gonna go buy a Viper that I was gonna dedicate to
- 1:02:21track use, I'd probably look into like a gen three that was possibly an R
- 1:02:25type, because you can pick 'em up for cheaper, which means you can throw the
- 1:02:28work that you need into it to make it outperform everything else on the track.
- 1:02:31Now again, we're not talking like a CR level here.
- 1:02:34Like if you go out and buy a 2017 a CR, you throw that thing at any
- 1:02:37track and you are to cross track, it's like gonna be a monster.
- 1:02:40There's almost no competing with it.
- 1:02:41When you have what the rear wings on those things have like.
- 1:02:451700 pounds of down force, or I think with full gills removed and
- 1:02:50all the vents over the wheels, it'll generate over 3000 pounds of
- 1:02:53down force or something like that.
- 1:02:54Yep.
- 1:02:55So are you serious?
- 1:02:56Yeah.
- 1:02:56Yeah.
- 1:02:57That's wild.
- 1:02:58I know.
- 1:02:58I remember seeing a forum post about a guy trailering his car to the track
- 1:03:02and he was getting five less miles per gallon because he had his a CR on the
- 1:03:06back of an open trailer and the down ports just on the highway from that
- 1:03:09was throwing things off like crazy.
- 1:03:11Over a thousand pounds of down.
- 1:03:12That's, that's wild.
- 1:03:14I don't, I seen any car does that.
- 1:03:15It's insane being in one of those cars.
- 1:03:16Right.
- 1:03:16Like my, a buddy of mine bought one directly from the factory.
- 1:03:20We were on our way home, you know, in Mexico, of course he broke like
- 1:03:23a little over a hundred and you just feel the car squat, he hits like one
- 1:03:2720 and it's almost like the car is slowing down because there's so much.
- 1:03:31Downforce that yes, it's accelerating, but it's not doing what it was doing
- 1:03:35from the 80 to 120 at that point.
- 1:03:37So it's just wild to feel.
- 1:03:39So this is a great opportunity for me to tell a little story as
- 1:03:43we transition to my next thought.
- 1:03:44Andrew mentioned earlier about his excursion in an a CR with the
- 1:03:48gentleman from our organization that owns a 2017, supposedly the story is
- 1:03:52he bought one of the last ones, you know, it's got his name on it and
- 1:03:55all this fun stuff and beautiful car.
- 1:03:57It's a black with green stripes.
- 1:03:59And I've had the privilege of riding in it several times.
- 1:04:01And the first time I got to ride in, it was at Watkins Glen.
- 1:04:04You know, we were just there not long ago.
- 1:04:06Uh, yep.
- 1:04:07You and I together.
- 1:04:08And so it reminded me of that story.
- 1:04:10And so, you know, every opportunity I can get to ride in a different
- 1:04:13car, especially as a coach, I will obviously take it because I wanna
- 1:04:16learn about the car and, you know, see how people are driving and all that.
- 1:04:19So I, I've ridden with this gentleman many, many times.
- 1:04:22He's gotten some private coaching.
- 1:04:23Now he is come a long way on his journey to, you know, where he is.
- 1:04:26And now he has his viper.
- 1:04:27We get out there.
- 1:04:28He, he already had it.
- 1:04:30Everything uncoupled, we'll call it that, right?
- 1:04:32So full down force, ready to go.
- 1:04:34And I'm looking at this thing, hey, it's on street tires, whatever.
- 1:04:36We pull out of pit lane, which is really long at the Glen.
- 1:04:39And he's like, Hey man, let tell you right away, I gotta let this car
- 1:04:42warm up before we can really go fast.
- 1:04:44And I'm like, we're already like hauling ass, okay.
- 1:04:48And then I'm like, I'm like, cool, alright.
- 1:04:50It's all good, you know?
- 1:04:51And I've had an, I've had an experience with this car throughout
- 1:04:54the weekend and I'm with, at this time, I'm there with my M three race
- 1:04:58car, the closing rate of the Viper.
- 1:05:00You'd look in your rear view mirror, there's nobody there.
- 1:05:01And two seconds later he was brushing his teeth in your rear view mirror.
- 1:05:04You're like, he was teleported there, but you know, which was his closing speed.
- 1:05:08So now I'm in the car and he's like, all right, we gotta let it warm up.
- 1:05:11You know, this kind of thing.
- 1:05:12We're still, we're booking and I'm like, wow, this thing is a rocket ship.
- 1:05:16So we come around the second.
- 1:05:17Full lap.
- 1:05:18And he is like, all right, we're gonna, we're gonna open it up now.
- 1:05:20I'm like, we're gonna open it up.
- 1:05:22So we get from, from turn two to the bus stop.
- 1:05:26I mean, we're in a buck and a half in fourth gear in like no time.
- 1:05:29And he goes, by the way, this is over the chatterbox.
- 1:05:31He's like, I've been told I need to maintain 150 mile an hour maximum.
- 1:05:36So he'd hit 150 and then he would just lift his foot, right?
- 1:05:38Because his closing rate was so big compared to everybody else.
- 1:05:42And I'm like, dude, I'm not understanding, I mean, we're, we're hauling butt.
- 1:05:45He goes, you're gonna understand in a second we go into the bus stop and he b
- 1:05:49lifts his foot and he doesn't even break.
- 1:05:52And the car just basically flies in there like, now at like a buck
- 1:05:5620 or whatever, we're gonna die.
- 1:05:59Right?
- 1:05:59I'm like, there is no way we're making it out the other side because
- 1:06:03he's coming in like, I'm in a, in a Honda Civic, like full out, right?
- 1:06:07And I'm like, bro.
- 1:06:08And he's like, just hang on.
- 1:06:10And he, he just quickly jabs the wheel and then gets back on
- 1:06:13the throttle and the car just.
- 1:06:15Absorbs itself into the asphalt.
- 1:06:17And I'm like, you gotta be kidding me.
- 1:06:20And I start laughing, right?
- 1:06:21And he's just like, he's like giggling a little bit as he's driving.
- 1:06:24And then he finally had to hit the brakes and turn six, right?
- 1:06:27Because he's like, oh, I can't go through here this fast.
- 1:06:29So he gets on the brakes and it's like freaking anti-gravity.
- 1:06:32And I'm like, holy cow.
- 1:06:34And then back on the throttle and away we go.
- 1:06:36And we are just like reeling in cars, like left and right at every
- 1:06:39lap faster and faster and faster.
- 1:06:42I've never been in a car that could get around the glen in
- 1:06:44sub two minutes, you know?
- 1:06:46And, and not even with the professional driver behind the wheel.
- 1:06:49I mean, that's how good this a CR was.
- 1:06:51It was a mind blowingly fast.
- 1:06:53And I walked away from the car and he's like, so what do you think?
- 1:06:56I look around the paddock.
- 1:06:57Y'all, you changed my, depends real quick.
- 1:06:59Yeah.
- 1:07:00After that, but I'm like.
- 1:07:01Y'all can keep all of this stuff, all of, because the Viper is like king.
- 1:07:07And it's one of those things that I don't think even me telling the story,
- 1:07:10people will believe until you experience.
- 1:07:12So what I'm trying to tell you is if you get a chance to ride
- 1:07:15in a late Gen Viper, do it.
- 1:07:17Do not hesitate to do it.
- 1:07:19'cause it's amazing if you trust the driver.
- 1:07:21Yes, that's a hundred percent true.
- 1:07:23I gotta put that in perspective of Motorsport a little bit.
- 1:07:25The Viper came on the scene, best nineties car built in the
- 1:07:28eighties to compete against what?
- 1:07:32So if we look at that time period, you're looking at 9 64 dx.
- 1:07:36Oh wait.
- 1:07:36Well, no, you still had, yeah, not back then.
- 1:07:38You're right, you're right, you're right, you're right.
- 1:07:39C4, Corvette and the ZR one didn't come out until 1995, and that's
- 1:07:43when the Gen two vipers were starting to come on the scene.
- 1:07:46You had the 9 64 from Porsche, you had a couple Ferrari that weren't anything
- 1:07:51to write home about, and maybe a couple other oddball things like, oh yeah, the
- 1:07:55Jaguar XG two 20, you know, random stuff like that, that was in that hype, what
- 1:07:59we would consider hypercar genre now.
- 1:08:02So the Viper didn't really have any competition until later.
- 1:08:05Corvette steps in and UPS their game big time, especially with
- 1:08:10the C five and C six R. So there's been a huge battle over the years.
- 1:08:14Huge rivalry between Dodge and Chevy when it came to that world.
- 1:08:21I don't know that anybody else really appreciated it as much
- 1:08:24as some of the rest of us did.
- 1:08:25'cause the Porsche guy's like, ah, whatever.
- 1:08:26We we're just gonna build a faster nine 11 and move the engine
- 1:08:29closer to the driver every year.
- 1:08:31It'll be perfect.
- 1:08:32Don't worry about it.
- 1:08:32I wonder, you know, as fans of the Viper, how did we feel about
- 1:08:36the rivalry and did the Corvette finally beat the Viper in the end?
- 1:08:40I mean, let's discount the mid-engine Corvette for a minute and let's maybe
- 1:08:44compare the C six and C seven to the A CR.
- 1:08:46I don't know.
- 1:08:47I've been in all of those cars.
- 1:08:49And to this day, I know I'm a little bit biased, but those ACR are another
- 1:08:53animal, like you're saying, ungodly, an average driver can get behind
- 1:08:57the wheel of one of those things and kill it out a track the way the
- 1:09:00downforce and everything else feels.
- 1:09:02It's just so hard to compete against.
- 1:09:04And with all the track records that broke, and I know the Corvette
- 1:09:06beats some of them, but it's just a whole nother animal in comparison.
- 1:09:10Plus, Corvettes do what?
- 1:09:1130,000 cars a year.
- 1:09:12If that's how many vipers are on the road?
- 1:09:14They did 32,000 from 92 to 17.
- 1:09:16So like it's just a whole different animal as far as rarity goes,
- 1:09:20which then gives them that allure.
- 1:09:22So I had a C six grand sport.
- 1:09:23First car I took to the track, which pretty comparable to this.
- 1:09:26I mean, it didn't make the same power, but it was very analog.
- 1:09:29It didn't have as many driver controls.
- 1:09:31I had a C seven Z 51, which that thing drove for you.
- 1:09:35It was too easy to drive and this requires attention.
- 1:09:38So did the C six, but I, I didn't have that.
- 1:09:40I've never owned a ZI know the Zs on paper will beat them with everything except for
- 1:09:45maybe road holding and a hundred to zero.
- 1:09:48Like you said, they, they make the same amount.
- 1:09:50For a year of Corvettes that they've made total of the
- 1:09:53vipers, which was another reason.
- 1:09:55I mean, I've always wanted one of these same thing poster on the wall when I
- 1:09:58was in high school, and I've always, you know, always need have, and I don't
- 1:10:02care if they're a little bit faster.
- 1:10:03You know, the exclusivity, I guess is a, is a draw.
- 1:10:06And also the V 10, I mean, you don't get that in a lot of domestic cards.
- 1:10:10There isn't many that aren't trucks that have V tens to
- 1:10:13put this kind of power down.
- 1:10:14We're gonna talk about the truck.
- 1:10:16I promised we wouldn't, I hinted to it earlier.
- 1:10:18I wanna close out this thought about the Viper itself.
- 1:10:21We joke about this on the drive through and Brad's brought up several times.
- 1:10:24Do you know there are still new vipers that are unsold at Chrysler
- 1:10:28dealerships throughout the United States?
- 1:10:30You can buy a brand new 2017 a CR off the dealer lot today.
- 1:10:34God knows what the markup is, how much.
- 1:10:36They're still out there.
- 1:10:37They're a lot.
- 1:10:38What I'm getting at is, you know, the Viper was Sunset now five, six years ago.
- 1:10:43At this point we're closing in on, right.
- 1:10:46If you think about, you know, they announced that they were closing
- 1:10:48out the production run in 16 to say, Hey, we're gonna have a few
- 1:10:51seventeens and then that's gonna be it.
- 1:10:52We're done and we're Vipers.
- 1:10:54End of story.
- 1:10:55Get it now while sales are hot.
- 1:10:56Then Fiat sort of hinted there's gonna be a resurgence of the Viper.
- 1:11:01They talked about a V eight powered Viper, and I'm like, oh, well
- 1:11:03they're borrowing a Ferrari mode.
- 1:11:04It is gonna be some Maserati.
- 1:11:06Concoction that they're gonna come up with.
- 1:11:08It'll probably look awesome.
- 1:11:10But you know, that never happened either.
- 1:11:12And now Chrysler's been absorbed into Stellantis, right?
- 1:11:16The Borg, right?
- 1:11:17They are the fourth largest auto manufacturer on the planet
- 1:11:21now, but we still don't know what's happening over there.
- 1:11:26Right?
- 1:11:26They've talked recently about Sunset setting the Hemi because
- 1:11:29of the, the evolution, right?
- 1:11:30The EV revolution.
- 1:11:31They've talked about, hey, this is, it party's over for the Challenger
- 1:11:35and the charger as we know them today.
- 1:11:37But it still brings up the question, what about the Viper?
- 1:11:39Everybody seems to be building a supercar right now, whether it's
- 1:11:44an EV or otherwise, I think it's time to reintroduce Hellcat engine.
- 1:11:48They're gonna put it in there.
- 1:11:49They put it in the minivan, they're gonna put it in a bike.
- 1:11:51There you go.
- 1:11:52Vice worth the Hellcat engine.
- 1:11:53I mean, I hope they don't, but one of my favorite memes that I've definitely
- 1:11:57shared with Eric and the guys is like all the other car brands, you
- 1:12:01know, they're like, oh, how do we make our cars more fuel efficient?
- 1:12:04And then it's a Dodge Dealers do a line of Coke strippers as, and uh,
- 1:12:09let's throw a Hellcat in a minivan.
- 1:12:11Yeah, it's like the Wolf of Wall Street.
- 1:12:16When it comes to like the future of it, I don't know if they would be able to
- 1:12:19bring back a All Electric Viper and be able to call it a viper and like, I don't
- 1:12:25know if the diehards would, would buy it if you put it under the Viper name.
- 1:12:28Like if they brought a supercar back and made it look like a Viper, but
- 1:12:31named it something else, I think it would be a lot more accepted.
- 1:12:33The Viper, at the end of the day, they wanted to make it raw or it needed to
- 1:12:37be a manual, it needed to have the B 10.
- 1:12:40And those were its needs.
- 1:12:41And that was why they built them the way they built them.
- 1:12:43So if they came out with something like an all electric Viper or
- 1:12:47something along those lines, you know, I'd worry that it would come
- 1:12:49out looking like the electric Mustang.
- 1:12:51Like that's not a, to me it would, it would dilute the brand name too, or the,
- 1:12:55you know, the model name in some way.
- 1:12:57But, and this is something we bring up often, which is important, which
- 1:13:00is also why we don't refer to the Mach e as the Mustang Mach e because
- 1:13:06they're, it's a Ford escape, but, we'll, we'll leave that where it is.
- 1:13:08Yes.
- 1:13:08But the, the, the name, the name Viper, just like Cobra or even nine 11 and other
- 1:13:15things, if you put that on something else, it just changes the whole dynamic.
- 1:13:19So I guess you just have to sunset it.
- 1:13:21And to your point, I often wondered, yes, I get the Purs side of the Viper,
- 1:13:26but would the Viper have been that much better with some sort of double clutch
- 1:13:30PDK system, you know, maybe borrowed from Mercedes or developed by Porsche or
- 1:13:34something like that to really squeeze out Corvette and, and some of these other,
- 1:13:38you know, supercars that are still around, they probably would've sold more vipers.
- 1:13:41It pains me to say it, if they made 'em an automatic, if you could
- 1:13:44put your golf clubs in the back and make it an automatic, they
- 1:13:46probably would've sold two sets.
- 1:13:48Of course.
- 1:13:49Yeah.
- 1:13:49Two sets of golf as is the Corvette standard.
- 1:13:51Yes.
- 1:13:51Two sets of golf clubs.
- 1:13:52And that's why like, I hate to say it, but that's why in my
- 1:13:55opinion, the Corvette sell more.
- 1:13:57'cause it's not like they're easier to work on.
- 1:13:58Where do you put the golf clubs in the C eight?
- 1:14:00I just wanna bring that up real quick.
- 1:14:02Front trunk, back trunk.
- 1:14:04Actually, I know they said they could do two, right?
- 1:14:06That was, that was their whole thing.
- 1:14:07I don't know why that's always a selling point, but it can fit too.
- 1:14:11That was rhetoric that rhetorically.
- 1:14:13I just wanna point that you put one in the passenger seat.
- 1:14:17One of the passenger seat next to you with the roof off and then one the back.
- 1:14:20Oh, there we go.
- 1:14:21There we go.
- 1:14:21Yeah, backdrop.
- 1:14:22I worry that if they did bring something back, I don't know if
- 1:14:25they would name it the Viper.
- 1:14:26There was, you know, there's always rumors and there's always rumors from
- 1:14:29the higher ups in Chrysler and everything else that come to some of the events.
- 1:14:32It's like, oh, like, well, if you could build a viper, like what would
- 1:14:36you guys be willing to give up?
- 1:14:37Would it be the B 10?
- 1:14:38Would it be the stick?
- 1:14:39Would it be rear wheel drive?
- 1:14:40Would it be mid engine?
- 1:14:42You know, what are those things to give up?
- 1:14:43And that's what gives us some hope that they would bring back something with how
- 1:14:47all the EV is going and everything else.
- 1:14:49I don't know if they'd be able to bring back a Viper and be able to sell it
- 1:14:53underneath the Viper brand name and have the support and dedication that
- 1:14:56the current owners have for the car.
- 1:14:58And we saw hints of that were beyond the grapevine rumors.
- 1:15:01There was a gentleman that had a bespoke Ferrari built that
- 1:15:05was very viper like in its look.
- 1:15:07We actually talked about it on the drive through episodes
- 1:15:09earlier in, I think season one.
- 1:15:12It was that we brought that up and we thought that was really interesting.
- 1:15:14We're like, wait, is this foreshadowing by way?
- 1:15:17Of Ferrari, you know, part of now the parent company, stellantis owns
- 1:15:21all of this stuff, which has also jogged my thoughts to say, this is the
- 1:15:25opportunity for Alpha Romeo to make a comeback with a viper like vehicle.
- 1:15:31Let's not call it a viper, but that would be their opportunity to introduce a
- 1:15:34hyper sports car or something like that.
- 1:15:37You know, along these lines, it would make sense.
- 1:15:38There's been rumors there too, that they wanna bring back the GTV.
- 1:15:42What's that gonna look like?
- 1:15:43What's that gonna be?
- 1:15:45You know, that's traditionally been a two-door sports car,
- 1:15:47you know, stuff like that.
- 1:15:48So maybe there's a chance, but I wonder the timing is right.
- 1:15:53Maybe not the formula to your point, right?
- 1:15:55Yeah.
- 1:15:56It's not a viper as we know it.
- 1:15:57And I think once like supercars and stuff do start coming out, I think they'll be
- 1:16:01able to build something along those lines.
- 1:16:03But it's gonna be pretty hard, at least at first to bring the comradery
- 1:16:07back into having an electric car.
- 1:16:09'cause most of these guys are like.
- 1:16:10I want all gas all the time.
- 1:16:12Like, I don't want an electric car.
- 1:16:13They don't make noise.
- 1:16:14They, you know, it's the diehard fans of when you buy a Viper, you're buying
- 1:16:17it because it's this raw machine, and now you're gonna go out and buy an
- 1:16:21electric car that, yeah, it's fast, but you're, you're losing some of
- 1:16:24that, so that might be hard to sell.
- 1:16:26Yeah.
- 1:16:26And when everybody's grocery getter can do zero to 60 in sub three seconds, I
- 1:16:30mean, what do you need a supercar for?
- 1:16:31Right.
- 1:16:32So it comes down to styling at that point.
- 1:16:33It comes down to amenities, interior.
- 1:16:35But to your point, the sound, the, one of the things about the Viper, even compared
- 1:16:39to an R eight or a Lamborghini mm-hmm.
- 1:16:41Which basically leverage the same V 10, the Viper has a distinct sound.
- 1:16:46I, I bring it back to those old days of the screaming Audi quatros.
- 1:16:49'cause it sounds more like an Audi.
- 1:16:51Than it does, you know, a V 10 Lamborghini or anything like that.
- 1:16:55So that's part of that experience.
- 1:16:57Is that sound, I mean, obviously you both can attest to that.
- 1:17:00It's, it's unique and it's, it's absolutely amazing.
- 1:17:03So two more pieces of Viper, let's say Lore or part of the
- 1:17:07Viper culture, we hinted at it several times, is the Viper truck.
- 1:17:11So Mike, do you end up working on those two?
- 1:17:13What's the deal with the Viper truck?
- 1:17:15So they're actually pretty cool.
- 1:17:16I've had a couple at my shop here and there.
- 1:17:18It is actually the same motor that's in Andrew's car behind you.
- 1:17:21And the two doors were stick, the four doors were automatic.
- 1:17:24They're pretty cool trucks.
- 1:17:26It's badass to say, yeah, I've got a Viper motor in my truck, and it'll,
- 1:17:30you know, roast the tires 'cause there's no weight in the rear.
- 1:17:32So that aspect of things is cool.
- 1:17:34I actually work with a guy not too far from me that specializes in
- 1:17:37the Viper, in the Viper trucks.
- 1:17:39He specializes in.
- 1:17:40Those trucks.
- 1:17:41So usually we work together and I send him some stuff that way if I have to work
- 1:17:44on the Piper trucks, but he calls me for any of the performance stuff sometimes.
- 1:17:48So it's one of those things where they're sweet.
- 1:17:51I would definitely rock one to drive it around.
- 1:17:53I mean, listen, trucks always get terrible gas mileage, so why
- 1:17:56not drive around with a big V 10?
- 1:17:58Like that's pretty badass.
- 1:17:59But you know, I mean, it competes against things like that.
- 1:18:01SVT Lightning and let's build these low, low rider trucks essentially
- 1:18:06that can go fast instead of.
- 1:18:07Now everything jumps specs wise, you know, same motor power plane as that.
- 1:18:11Gen three Viper that Andrew has.
- 1:18:13They built those in very low numbers.
- 1:18:15Right.
- 1:18:15Only for like maybe a year or two.
- 1:18:16I believe it was oh five and oh six.
- 1:18:20There may have been 2004.
- 1:18:22I'm not very well versed as far as the Viper truck aspect of things Go.
- 1:18:26It's not, it's a cool piece of nostalgia, right?
- 1:18:28Yeah.
- 1:18:28And if you think about it, the marketing campaign was brilliant because they
- 1:18:31literally sold it as the Viper truck.
- 1:18:33Yeah.
- 1:18:33And when it debuted, there was a viper on a trailer being
- 1:18:36pulled by the Viper pickup.
- 1:18:38And I just thought that's the ultimate.
- 1:18:39That's, that's amazing.
- 1:18:40I mean, that's pretty cool, especially color matching blue
- 1:18:42with the white stripes, you know, that classic iconic Viper look.
- 1:18:46Although for me it's still the three spoke wheels and the red Targa, but
- 1:18:49you know, we'll leave that where it is.
- 1:18:51But that actually leads me into probably one of the most brilliant,
- 1:18:55if not conceived by Chrysler, but in partnership ad campaigns ever, which was
- 1:19:01the probably long forgotten by a lot of our audience, if they even saw it in the
- 1:19:06first place, which is NBC's show called.
- 1:19:10Viper, which debuted in the nineties and was basically a redo of night rider.
- 1:19:16It had the same storyline.
- 1:19:18I hate to say I binged all 80 episodes.
- 1:19:20I wrote an article about this, you can search for it on our website.
- 1:19:23I thought season one was amazing and that is actually really what cemented it for
- 1:19:27me, really fall in love with the Viper is bringing that kind of night rider forward.
- 1:19:32'cause I got to see the Viper on the regular, I got to hear it.
- 1:19:35It was on adventures, it was doing all that cool stuff.
- 1:19:37But what I thought was neat was there was a lot of foreshadowing in that and it
- 1:19:41was really smart on the part of Chrysler.
- 1:19:43And I pointed this out in the, in the article too.
- 1:19:45There were a lot of Chrysler prototypes in various episodes of the show
- 1:19:49parked along the side of the road, strategically placed in scenes of the
- 1:19:53show where, you know, they're flying with the Viper sideways and jump out
- 1:19:56and you're like, wait, what's that?
- 1:19:57Uh, Chrysler Espresso in the background there.
- 1:19:59You know, weird concept car that they were trying to make look futuristic
- 1:20:03because the show was supposed to be set some somewhere in the future.
- 1:20:06What I also thought was really unique.
- 1:20:08Is they also sneak peak, the GTS on that show.
- 1:20:12If you watch, I believe it was like season two-ish or so, there's a blue
- 1:20:16GTS coop during a traffic stop where there's a bunch of, you know, typical
- 1:20:20Chrysler intrepids blocking traffic, and this blue coop is just sitting there
- 1:20:25and then the Viper team shows up and it's just kind of in the background and
- 1:20:28you don't pay too much attention to it.
- 1:20:29You're like, because now we all realize, oh, the, the GTS is the thing, but back
- 1:20:33then you're like, holy crap, what is this?
- 1:20:35Right?
- 1:20:35Yeah.
- 1:20:35This is pretty cool.
- 1:20:36Part of our petrol heads of a certain age, right?
- 1:20:39And so we grew up with this show and then it disappeared and whatnot.
- 1:20:42So what's, what, what are your guys thoughts on it?
- 1:20:44So I, ironically enough, I've only seen actually a couple episodes.
- 1:20:47So to put this in perspective, I haven't seen, I haven't seen any.
- 1:20:52I was born the same year.
- 1:20:53The Viper came out all through the nineties.
- 1:20:55I was like a young kid.
- 1:20:56It's a treat, let me tell you.
- 1:20:58Alright, well I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to download it
- 1:21:00or find it on Hulu or some crap.
- 1:21:02Yeah, and watch all of them.
- 1:21:03You let me know what the best episode is.
- 1:21:05I'll watch the best episode.
- 1:21:06Season one is actually the best, and I'll be honest with you guys.
- 1:21:09The show was technically canceled at the end of season one, but
- 1:21:12then I don't know who petitioned.
- 1:21:14I gotta go back into my, my lore and trivia there.
- 1:21:17Seasons two and three were brought back with a different cast and then season.
- 1:21:21Four, they actually brought back the original actors and the
- 1:21:24original cast, and that's actually really good to kind of bookend it.
- 1:21:27If you watch Seasons One and season four, I have all of them,
- 1:21:30by the way, I can hook you guys up.
- 1:21:31Oh, perfect.
- 1:21:31Uh, to check it out.
- 1:21:32It's, it's absolutely amazing.
- 1:21:34But what was also cool about that, aside of all the things they had to do to build
- 1:21:38the defender, which was, you know, kit, let's call it that they spent so much
- 1:21:43money in the first season just on CGI, and this was cutting edge CGI to do this
- 1:21:48transformation of, you know, a stock viper into the defender on screen in real time.
- 1:21:53They said it, every time they did it, it cost 'em like, you know, a hundred grand
- 1:21:56or something to do the CGI was nuts.
- 1:21:59Later they made it really cheesy and you know, and then they eventually went back
- 1:22:02to that as computers got better and less expensive and all that kind of stuff.
- 1:22:05But even there, the idea of this viper coop.
- 1:22:09In the form of the defender, you kind of look at it and go, this
- 1:22:12is a thing, this is possible.
- 1:22:14And I wonder if that inspired Chrysler or if they already knew they were gonna go
- 1:22:19with the Cobra and then the Daytona Cobra.
- 1:22:21Right.
- 1:22:21And I'm, you know, who decided, or Leg just said, we're gonna do
- 1:22:25this if it worked for Pontiac, it's gotta work for Chrysler.
- 1:22:27It's gotta work Dodge.
- 1:22:28Right.
- 1:22:29So it's, it's kind of, it's, it's kind of cheesy and corny when you look
- 1:22:32back over it, but it's also somewhat awesome at the same time and some of
- 1:22:36the tech and the things that were there.
- 1:22:38And so I recommended, if you haven't seen it, but I'll hook you guys up.
- 1:22:41You gotta check it out.
- 1:22:41If nothing else, check out the article on our website to get
- 1:22:44a fast forward on all that.
- 1:22:46And I tell you what, I've mentioned it before, if I had to own one
- 1:22:48Hollywood car, it would be a defender.
- 1:22:51And by the way, Felix.
- 1:22:52And and reason being, they were built on actual vipers.
- 1:22:56So if there's low numbers out there, there's cars that are missing.
- 1:22:59They're Hollywood cars and they didn't use like some old Chevy Nova
- 1:23:03and make it sound like a viper.
- 1:23:05They were actually built on top of production vipers.
- 1:23:08So kind of cool.
- 1:23:08Very interesting.
- 1:23:09Kind of cool, you know, couple of those.
- 1:23:1132,000 are still out there in Hollywood, running around.
- 1:23:14So As the defender?
- 1:23:15As the defender, yeah.
- 1:23:17The defender's pretty, it's pretty badass.
- 1:23:18It's not an ugly car at all.
- 1:23:20It kind of looks like a, like a Gen four, gen five viper in some, you
- 1:23:23know, at certain angles, especially the taillights and the nose and stuff.
- 1:23:27Like with the thinner headlights, you know, I kind of see it was like
- 1:23:29foreshadowing of what the Viper could be in the future, right?
- 1:23:32Yeah.
- 1:23:33I mean, they definitely took some of the design cues, right?
- 1:23:35And the story there is the defender was actually developed by a famous company
- 1:23:41that does like movie cars, right?
- 1:23:43Would develop all these like specialty cars.
- 1:23:45And so it was their design built on top of that Viper chassis.
- 1:23:48So I thought that was really kind of cool that somebody had the ingenuity to
- 1:23:51say, well, we could take this, we could make it sleek and, you know, make it a
- 1:23:54coop and do all these kinds of things.
- 1:23:56And it's really neat.
- 1:23:57And it's still, like you mentioned, it still looks good today, although
- 1:24:00it's still had the three spoke wheels.
- 1:24:01Well, I guess you like them, huh?
- 1:24:03Uh, just a little bit.
- 1:24:04I mean, you know, I, I like them for what they are.
- 1:24:08That's the only thing on those cars that date them.
- 1:24:10It's very true, but it's very unique.
- 1:24:12It's a very vibrant thing.
- 1:24:13No other car had is a three spoke wheel that looks like that.
- 1:24:16You know, not even the smart cars with their three bolt wheels, but uh,
- 1:24:20I also hear they're really hard to get tires for 'cause it's a unique
- 1:24:23size, like a 16 by something bizarre.
- 1:24:26Yep.
- 1:24:26The early models, 3 35 or something like that.
- 1:24:29I, I saw in the forum when I was looking it up.
- 1:24:31Yeah, if you try to find them, you have to buy 'em used or they do group
- 1:24:35buys for the people who have those cars because now they don't manufacture 'em.
- 1:24:39So you gotta find used ones or old ones, which is wild.
- 1:24:42So before we wrap up and kind of close up, I have a pit stop like question to ask
- 1:24:46you, Mike, because we've geeked out here for, you know, over an hour about Vipers.
- 1:24:51We're all over the map and talking about really fun stuff and stories.
- 1:24:54But I gotta ask, is the Viper the sexiest car of all time, in your opinion?
- 1:24:58Ooh, I love the Viper, but lately pains me to say this and I'm sure plenty
- 1:25:03of people will be pissed about it.
- 1:25:04Lately I've been loving the new Porsche GT four.
- 1:25:07I still love the Viper.
- 1:25:08Like I think the a CR is like one of the sexiest cars like I've ever seen.
- 1:25:11Going back to those old GTS R like I think they're gorgeous cars.
- 1:25:14I think it's definitely up there, but I, the Porsches are starting to.
- 1:25:18Grow a spot in my heart because I fit in them and they look
- 1:25:21good and they're pretty quick.
- 1:25:22So since you get to work with Vipers on the regular and maybe you get a little
- 1:25:26desensitized to them and that's fine.
- 1:25:271000%. Oh yeah.
- 1:25:29So, you know, if I asked you the question, if you had a three
- 1:25:32car garage and unlimited funds, what would you fill it with?
- 1:25:36Anything but a viper, what would it be?
- 1:25:38Ooh.
- 1:25:38Anything but a hyper.
- 1:25:40Yeah, you're, because you, you, you've already, you deal with them on the
- 1:25:42regular, so is that really fair?
- 1:25:44I, I guess you're right.
- 1:25:46I would get new GT four.
- 1:25:47I'd have to get like a truck, like I'd want like a Dodge dually and I would
- 1:25:51probably get some badass, I don't know, maybe like a newer M three to daily
- 1:25:55drive that is ugliest car of all time.
- 1:25:58I love this question.
- 1:25:59Ooh, ugliest car, PC cruiser with the wood grain.
- 1:26:03Oh man, that's up, that's a dodge spot too.
- 1:26:05I'm, I'm breaking bad.
- 1:26:06When they give, when they give Walt Jr. His, uh, he got the, uh,
- 1:26:10challenger and then, uh, they take it back and give him PC Cruiser.
- 1:26:14And, uh, in, in case you need another reason to hate Skyler most hateable woman
- 1:26:18on all tv, it's because she got on the TT cruiser that Aztec does something to me.
- 1:26:26Like, I don't know why, who thought that was a great design, but it's not for me.
- 1:26:31All right, so as we close out, one final thought, Mike, you mentioned
- 1:26:34several times, you know, as a now longtime member of the Viper Club and
- 1:26:38Viper Owners Association, et cetera.
- 1:26:40You know, one of their slogans is, come for the cars, but stay for the people.
- 1:26:44Do you wanna talk about the Viper Club and, and why Andrew should join,
- 1:26:48or why someone else should join?
- 1:26:50You know, what's it all about?
- 1:26:51So it really, it's all about, at the end of the day, the comradery, right?
- 1:26:54Like, I've got guys that have bought cars, bought Vipers, didn't get
- 1:26:57involved, and then ended up selling the cars a couple years later because.
- 1:27:00They weren't going out with other guys, they weren't doing stuff with the car.
- 1:27:03So they're like, well, I'm just gonna sell it.
- 1:27:05And then you have guys that join the clubs that get involved and go out to
- 1:27:08all these events and get to meet all these great people and just have a blast.
- 1:27:12You've got Viper guys that have millions of dollars and you've got
- 1:27:15guys that are blue collar, like just got their dream car, like love it.
- 1:27:20Don't have a ton of money, but love their car.
- 1:27:22You can all hang out in the same room together and you
- 1:27:24would never guess who was who.
- 1:27:26Everyone is humble.
- 1:27:27They're super modest.
- 1:27:28And I've gone, you know, I mean we've gone to track days and everything
- 1:27:31else and you meet guys in Ferrari clubs and Porsche clubs and some of
- 1:27:35them are hoity-toity in other clubs.
- 1:27:37Whereas like in the Viper Club, I've only met a handful, few of
- 1:27:40guys that were like ever really true like dickheads in the Viper Club.
- 1:27:44It's one of those things where you just meet so many great people and have such
- 1:27:47a good time at every event you go to.
- 1:27:50If you can get involved, get involved, and you know, I mean it's, at the
- 1:27:53end of the day, you make the most of whatever your situation is.
- 1:27:55If you want to get involved to come do stuff, you're gonna have a blast.
- 1:27:58There's no way you're not gonna have fun.
- 1:28:00And if you don't want to go do stuff, that's fine.
- 1:28:02I joke all the time and I'm.
- 1:28:03Pretty active in our area and I run a lot of events and it's so
- 1:28:07hard to get people to get off their couch, to have fun with us.
- 1:28:10Like if I'm not calling them during the week saying, Hey, like we're going
- 1:28:13to this event, it's a car cruises and we're gonna go do a tour yingling
- 1:28:16and like hang out and have lunch.
- 1:28:18They don't show up.
- 1:28:19It's like, guys come out, have a good time, and the guys that
- 1:28:21come, ah, it was so much fun.
- 1:28:23And then everyone online gets upset that they didn't go.
- 1:28:25You know, it's one of those things where if you can get
- 1:28:27involved, get involved and do it.
- 1:28:30Like I was just down at, in Miami last year for a National Viper event.
- 1:28:33There was like 200 vipers down in Miami.
- 1:28:36We did a track day, we did dinners, we did all sorts of like, did
- 1:28:40you drive your Viper down there?
- 1:28:41So no, I was, I played support vehicle and fixed cars going on my way down.
- 1:28:45Nice.
- 1:28:46But I did have the opportunity, a customer or a friend of mine was like.
- 1:28:50We went to the track day and I just was going to hang out and ride bitch.
- 1:28:53He's like, oh, you're driving today.
- 1:28:54Here's the keys and take it out on the track.
- 1:28:56Have fun.
- 1:28:57Oh, okay.
- 1:28:58Well good friend.
- 1:28:59I'm in.
- 1:29:00So like I've gotten to do some things like that and that's where the benefit
- 1:29:03of working on these and being trusted with them, you just meet so many good
- 1:29:07people that it just, it's crazy the amount of nice guys that you meet and
- 1:29:11the other like, not opportunities, but like there's just so many different cool
- 1:29:14things you get to go and see and do.
- 1:29:16And again, all through like the comradery of the car.
- 1:29:19I've been in other car clubs and stuff and none of them have ever
- 1:29:22been like anything I've experienced with the Viper Owners Association.
- 1:29:25I think to the point, if you can't.
- 1:29:27Afford a Viper and the Viper's still on your dream list as your dream car.
- 1:29:30You've been salivating after.
- 1:29:32Mm-hmm.
- 1:29:32There's some really excellent alternatives from the, the Hemi Chargers to, you know,
- 1:29:37the scat packs and all the challengers and all these different types of things
- 1:29:40that are on some of the other models.
- 1:29:42I mean, they're obviously making more horsepower than the Viper in some
- 1:29:45respects, especially the demon at a thousand Horsepower and all that
- 1:29:49craziness that's going on there.
- 1:29:50Dodge made some really cool stuff, and I think the Viper gave way to them being
- 1:29:56at the front end of modern muscle cars because when you look at the entries by
- 1:30:01Ford and even by Chevy, and, and let's discount the Corvette because it's, it's
- 1:30:05really achieved supercar status now.
- 1:30:08They can hang their hat on saying, we revolutionize the modern muscle car.
- 1:30:13And, and I gotta tip my hat to them.
- 1:30:15And I, and like I said, I think the Viper gave way to that.
- 1:30:17And I think what you're doing at Havoc by keeping these cars engaged,
- 1:30:22keeping their owners engaged, maintain these collections, working with these
- 1:30:25folks at the national level, going to these track events and, and bringing
- 1:30:29Viper enthusiasm, not just Motorsports enthusiasm, but about this particular
- 1:30:33brand to the surface is awesome.
- 1:30:34And that's why we get excited about it.
- 1:30:36And folks like Andrew and I can geek out with you for
- 1:30:39over an hour about these cars.
- 1:30:41So, you know, I gotta say in closing, Mike, I think this has been awesome.
- 1:30:45Maybe it was a little hard to follow for some folks, but if you're a
- 1:30:48Viper owner or maybe you're a viper.
- 1:30:50Fan.
- 1:30:50Hopefully you learn something from this episode, but I'll leave you with this.
- 1:30:55If you wanna learn more about Havoc performance, check out their
- 1:30:58website@www.havocperformance.com or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.
- 1:31:04Or email Mike directly at mike@havocperformance.com.
- 1:31:08'cause he's got all your answers, everything you wanna know,
- 1:31:11everything you wanna look for.
- 1:31:12Super personal guys, super knowledgeable.
- 1:31:14So we thank you for coming on the show.
- 1:31:16I think this has been absolutely fantastic.
- 1:31:18I really appreciate it.
- 1:31:19What I loved coming on and doing this, what's that?
- 1:31:21Instagram handle Havoc performance.
- 1:31:23Okay?
- 1:31:24It's all havoc.
- 1:31:25It's all havoc, performance.
- 1:31:26It's all havoc performance.
- 1:31:27But again, if anyone ever has any questions, and same thing with you
- 1:31:30guys, if you have any questions, but I'm definitely dragging your asses out
- 1:31:33for our Snakes on the Mountain event.
- 1:31:35Ooh.
- 1:31:35So make sure your car is ready.
- 1:31:38It's basically a private event.
- 1:31:39We do it usually at a guy's house that has a car collection,
- 1:31:42so you get to see that as well.
- 1:31:43But it's performance forward.
- 1:31:44So like for gts, cobras, Shelby stuff, Vipers will invite like track
- 1:31:49hawks and demons and stuff will come.
- 1:31:51And then it's also Ferrari.
- 1:31:53So it's a competition between the three.
- 1:31:54Last year I had almost 40 Viper show up.
- 1:31:57And where is, and where is this at?
- 1:31:59Is this at Pocono or where is this held?
- 1:32:01This is, uh, it's uh, about 20 minutes from my house.
- 1:32:03Depending on whose place we're doing it at this year, we're gonna do it over in
- 1:32:06like SA Valley, over near Lehigh College.
- 1:32:08So it's more of like a hill climb, mountain run type of deal.
- 1:32:12Think of it like private cars and coffee.
- 1:32:13Right.
- 1:32:13I gotcha, gotcha.
- 1:32:14Come up, like, hang out.
- 1:32:15We usually do a car cruise afterwards and lunch.
- 1:32:17You know, we show up at like nine o'clock, hang out till like 11, go do a
- 1:32:21car cruise for an hour, hour and a half.
- 1:32:23Stop and get lunch.
- 1:32:24Usually around one, two o'clock when the places are slow.
- 1:32:26And uh, then everyone either goes on their way or we go do something else.
- 1:32:30You guys, that sounds like a blast.
- 1:32:32Bye.
- 1:32:32All right boys, take it easy.
- 1:32:34Alright.
- 1:32:34Hey, it was fun.
- 1:32:35Hey, have a good night.
- 1:32:36Thanks again.
- 1:32:36See?
- 1:32:42That's right listeners, if you enjoyed this episode, be sure
- 1:32:45to check out our Patreon for a follow on pit stop mini episode.
- 1:32:51So check that out on www.patreon.com/gt motorsports and get access to
- 1:32:57all sorts of behind the scenes content from this episode and more.
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