Wanna get rid of the light? My neon acr may need that for the challenge.....
Wanna get rid of the light? My neon acr may need that for the challenge.....
Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:Wanna get rid of the light? My neon acr may need that for the challenge.....
A local guy told me he'd like it for his gambler. If he doesn't pick it up in a few days I will happily donate it to ya.
Excellent car! If the Washington Monument could be horizontal and on wheels, it would be the Viper. It's such a phallic, hairy symbol. The awesome sound of that thing was seared into my brain in the '90s, and it never went away.
Definitely throw that hot air intake as far away as possible.
Awesome car, will definitely follow this one closely. How many miles are on it or did I miss that?
K&N offers this, somewhat of an improvement... but it's available at least.
https://www.knfilters.com/57-1508-performance-air-intake-system
corsepervita said:Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:Wanna get rid of the light? My neon acr may need that for the challenge.....
A local guy told me he'd like it for his gambler. If he doesn't pick it up in a few days I will happily donate it to ya.
Awesome. Thanks!
And now I'll go back to lurking and enjoying 90s mopar restorations.
rico750sxi_2 said:Awesome car, will definitely follow this one closely. How many miles are on it or did I miss that?
72k on it roughly. About to be a whole lot more now that I own it lol.
So quick update:
- replaced the battery (it now cranks a whooooooole lot better)
- with the sensors (IAT/MAP/TPS) replaced, reset the ECU
- Went to take the car for a good hour long drive. Followed the instructions I was given by some guys on the viper forums on the ECU reset process and calibration process.
- Car now idles fantastic, runs fantastic, no more crazy rich condition, starts quickly, and power delivery is snappy as hell. No more stuttering, no more hunting idle. Feels like a COMPLETELY different car now.
- Cleaned up the interior a bit
Has to feel good to have it sorted. Enjoy it!
Norma66-Brent said:Has to feel good to have it sorted. Enjoy it!
There's still some other things I would like to do like proactively replace the O2 sensors, and the master cyl for the clutch and brake because they are both old, and I doubt either have ever been done. The master cyl for clutch is leaking ever so slightly which I don't want to be clutchless shifting a viper home. So in the coming weeks that'll get done.
But it runs much much better and it's a blast to drive. The tires, I checked the code, are 08 2017, so they're not super new or super old. But they are all seasons and not as aggressive as I'd like. It is pretty damn easy to break traction in it.
Love the simplicity of the interior. I wish more new cars came like this.
corsepervita said:The tires, I checked the code, are 08 2017, so they're not super new or super old. But they are all seasons and not as aggressive as I'd like. It is pretty damn easy to break traction in it.
This just in: it will never not be pretty damn easy to break traction in it.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:corsepervita said:The tires, I checked the code, are 08 2017, so they're not super new or super old. But they are all seasons and not as aggressive as I'd like. It is pretty damn easy to break traction in it.This just in: it will never not be pretty damn easy to break traction in it.
OjaiM5 said:Love the simplicity of the interior. I wish more new cars came like this.
You know, it's interesting how vastly different they are. I enjoy it too.
Someone asked me the other day what the difference is between the Jalpa and the Viper and which I like more. I really can't say I like one "more" than the other but like the experiences differently.
The Lamborghini has all this effort put into how they hand shaved the leather, how they spent time hiding fasteners, it goes together like a puzzle piece so that it looks like one big flowing piece with gauges that are fancy and buttons galore for all the features they came with. They're not the fastest car on the road, but they're ridiculous and hold a presence. The sound is like a v8 symphony behind you that sounds glorious, and it still goes fast. But it's everything about the car that adds up to the experience of driving one, it always feels like an event, every time I drive it. The engineering is weird and out there, and the way some things were done is just so strange that it has a unique charm to it.
The Viper is different. The interior is slapped together with pieces that snap in or snap out, fasteners all over the place, super basic, only the gauges that need to be there exist with a few basic dials for heat and AC. The original tape deck is still in there and doesn't seem to work, which would be pointless anyway because the crazy sound booming from the side pipes everywhere you go would drown out anything that came out of them anyway. It's loud, obnoxious, far from convenient to drive, the pedals are off to the side like an 80s lambo but they're properly spaced so heel-toe is actually nice and easy to do (In my opinion). The steering feedback is solid, the brakes are easy to lock up if you want them to. The fit and finish of body panels and the interior leaves much to be desired, but you kind of just don't give a E36 M3 because all you want to do is go nail some twisties and feel the torque pull you out of corners and throw you back in the seat over and over again.
In a nutshell.... the Lamborghini is built to be an experience. The Viper is built so that the experience is about the drive itself, and nothing else matters.
Not sure how I'm just seeing this thread now, but wow. Bravo for grabbing one of these and sharing the ownership experience with the rest of us!
Early Vipers are AWESOME. They both scare the crap out of me and excite the hell out of me. To me, they marked a return-to-form for Chrysler's tendency to build insane vehicles that should be equipped with a Surgeon General's warning sticker. They actively want to kill you, yet you have to go back for more. I love the "made by dudes for dudes" line your significant other mentioned, hit the nail on the head. 
I'll be following this intently.
Tony Sestito said:Not sure how I'm just seeing this thread now, but wow. Bravo for grabbing one of these and sharing the ownership experience with the rest of us!
Early Vipers are AWESOME. They both scare the crap out of me and excite the hell out of me. To me, they marked a return-to-form for Chrysler's tendency to build insane vehicles that should be equipped with a Surgeon General's warning sticker. They actively want to kill you, yet you have to go back for more. I love the "made by dudes for dudes" line your significant other mentioned, hit the nail on the head.
I'll be following this intently.
I got my camera/phone mount for it today but during my work break it was 28F outside with freezing fog and I thought, "you know maybe I'll just wait for a better day because it's not viper weather today." LOL
But I'll get some footage for you guys soon and do a walkthrough of the car and stuff. I'm currently on the hunt for an OEM intake. If I can't find one soon I'll just make my own airbox setup and print it out. I already have some plans on some other stuff I can print.
MotoIQ has a 97 GTS in the stable as a project car: https://motoiq.com/project-viper-gts-part-2-general-maintenance/ part 1 was just going over the history of the Viper coming to be. Part 2 onward is the actual project and what they tackle for repairs/improvements. Fair number of pictures to go over and fairly in depth descriptions on the why's and how's.
Hope it helps!
Excited to follow along on living with a dream car!
Well, I have failed to find a stock or stockish intake for the car, and given that I'd like to make my own, I decided that instead of /guessing/ what would work well, I would do some data analysis. A lot of the other air intakes on the market look to be very similar to what the stock intake looks like, so I thought, "Why don't I make something to datalog and figure it out"
I present to you my weekend project, a thermistor project I'll do where I can hook up multiple thermistors in various "i hope this ideal" locations in the engine bay to see what the potential for IAT would be there. Determine what the best area would be for airflow and temp.
It's currently icy as hell outside, with snow all over so needless to say only the C4S is coming out this weekend.
These thermistors are made for 3d printers, and therefore, are good to over 300C. (If I saw those temps in my engine bay I'd E36 M3 myself)
Once I'm done, and once it's working, I am happy to put the bill of materials, and code up on github so others can use it. I'm also open to ideas, suggestions on making it better.
Rock Star Bob Lutz
These thermistors are made for 3d printers, and therefore, are good to over 300C. (If I saw those temps in my engine bay I'd E36 M3 myself)
You wouldn't be the only one! If I saw that kind of temperature, I would, 1, yell holy berkeleying E36 M3! and then two, probably E36 M3 myself... Then I would probably realize it was some sort of malfunction and hope to god that my engine isn't going into super nuclear meltdown....
Alright, so after digging through a few repos that already exist, I found that the wheel is round in temperature math, so I didn't have to crunch numbers. After sorting out some resistor values and a few extra goodies, I have what appears to be a pretty damn accurate temperature.
So in the morning I'll hook up more analog sections and make sure all of them are consistent. If they are, then really all I need to do is solder up some basic board, 3d print a basic enclosure, get my little portable phone battery, along with something to log to SD so I can have my max temps recorded annnnnnnnnnd cool.
Well, so far, more successful than I thought for an evening of testing, I even fit some video game time in while I did it.
So tomorrow when I wake up my project will be:
- Create several more banks
- Connect to several more pins
- Figure out how I want to do the wiring harness
- Design a 3d printed enclosure for the device and battery
After that I will hook it up into one of my cars and see what they all get. I also think I'll do 30 second intervals instead of every second, because the amount of data over 1 second seems excessive for engine bay temperatures.
Below is putting in a test.txt file (used an adafruit sd card reader and a few other open source arduino examples to piece together the code), and then just using the actual value of the temperature to print it into the file. Not too crazy.
I think I'll probably leave a comment in the code to have it also convert to Celcius for those who want that instead of Fahrenheit.
The below values in the text file are the sensor in a glass, then me picking it up and holding it for a few seconds between my fingers to make sure that it is picking up temps properly.
For those interested in the wiring:
That's super cool. I'll be interested to see what you find out on the underhood temps.
I tried to do some Arduino programming once and got totally confused. I had to call in my cousin who does that kind of thing for work. So I'm impressed by anyone who can make those little things work.
Update on the horrific idle and stalling issue:
So, the idle is FINALLY really good, even after the car is warmed up.
I cleaned out the throttle bodies today and all of the vacuum holes were nearly completely plugged up.
I have officially replaced:
- IAT sensor
- TPS sensor
- MAP sensor
- Both O2 sensors
- Replaced temp sender
- Replaced the battery, it was definitely old
Other steps taken:
- Cleaned out the idle control valve. It was so sticky and nasty, it was full of crap. Cleaned out the tube for it. Reinstalled.
- Cleaned the throttle bodies out, and soaked the vacuum holes, used an air compressor and thoroughly cleaned everything till it was nice and clean, and the vacuum ports were letting stuff properly pass.
- Double checked the throttle plates and sync
- Reset ECU once again
So I reset the ECU only after I had done the MAP and TPS and IAT. I had not reset it again AFTER I replaced the O2 sensor.
Another thing I noticed was that when I replaced the vacuum lines to the passenger side throttle body, the hose was completely crushed in. So I replaced those with some thicker, reinforced, same ID hose. The OD was thicker, which meant I had to bolt it up first, and then put the hoses on, but at least they aren't kinked and crushed.
At first it idled pretty rich after I replaced the O2 sensors, but now that I've reset the ECU, cleaned out the throttle plates and replaced quite a few vacuum lines, this car is idling and purring like a kitten.
My suspicion is that there may have just been way too much buildup on the plates that wasn't allowing very good flow at idle. There was a thick caked line of crap built up in front of the plate, which would have restricted airflow at idle. Now I actually see an ever so tiny gap. Cleaning out the idle control valve also definitely made a noticeable different on idle.
My initial thought was, "Obviously this map is messed up, and something else is wrong." The good news is, there's no sensors under the hood for the ecu that are old anymore, so I don't have to consider the condition of them, I can just drive on knowing they're fine. And that makes me happy.
I am loving this car.
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