Used Viper: How many miles is TOO many?

[Tom and Vipers]

Here are a few data points:

1) I drove a 94 w/95k on it. The body was still pretty tight however, the engine had just been replaced - I don't know the details of the engine problem.

2) I just bot Wayne's Bad Viper. It has TNT heads/cam/headers 511 rwph on engine, 695 squeezed. This short block has never been cracked and the forged pistons sound better than most new engines. It uses NO OIL and gets a SOLID 21+ mpg!!

3) A Wisconsin tuner sold an RT with 75k w/heads/cam to a fellow in FL. This was a few years back. The car has even more miles on it and the engine is fine. This one, however, has a lot of gearbox, rearend whine/howl and some rattles.

4) I have 10k on my 00 and it is STILL A NEW CAR!!!!!!

The Viper if maintenanced reasonably does not wear out at 100k. Unfortunately, the resale values of Vipers assume that they do. This is unfortunate. Porsches, MBs, and BMWs are fairly mileage resistant regarding resale.

Of course, you will find these wonderful German cars with 100k no sweat. I wonder if ANYONE has put 200k on a Viper?

Maybe we should have a "race?"

(FYI: Chevy Caprices were the gold standard for taxis. The engines regularly went over 300k - no timing chain problems! But this held true for only a couple of years. Another tidbit, I believe it was Ford Dana 60's in vans... around 300k the ring and pinions disintegrated! Apparently, they were using powder metalurgy and they hit a life limit - I don't know the precise failure mode.)

 

[JonB]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cory:
.....I'm a little leary buying a used sports car especially a Viper becuase most are used as weekend cars and as a "Toy" car and often are abused.............How bad is the maintaince on these cars? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

ASSumption # 1 is WRONG......Many Vipers are babied and loved to death. Toys that get respect.


"Its Just A Dodge" .........and maintenance is 15 - 20% the cost of other exotics.

If you are concerned, buy one of the MANY pre-owned Vipers in classifieds here....IN your budget......and with likley references.

How many miles is too many? ANY miles that you were not driving a Viper !!!


GOOD LUCK........ Then Join VCA

 

[Tom and Vipers]

...another think to keep in mind.

If driven sensibly, the duty cycle on a Viper (or any other high HP car) will be very low! A 80HP 4 cyl is floored most of its life. You do that to a Viper and it will bury you!

So the only abuse is running it low on oil, overspeeding engine on downshifting (rev limited on upshift), and collision damage.

Frankly, I don't know when the oil change interval would be critical to hurt the engine but I'll bet it is over 5k miles.

Another thing to keep in mind, the v10 is based on the 318 v8 which was renowned for its strength in the 60's and 70's.

Mopar was the king of durability in the muscle cars. NO ONE could come close to their durability!! Chevys ran fast but exploded every component of the drive train including engine. Fords ....well... sorry but not very fast so irrelevant....

 

[BlackACR]

Hey Cory, I may have my 99 Gts for sale for under $60,000 with lots of extras, e-mail me if intrested for all the info. I live in Dallas.

 

[AviP]

Logically speaking, the amount of mods under the hood is usually an indicator of how much more performance the owner desired and consequently derived or abused as you put it.

That does not mean that modded cars are abused, just that they are more likely to be than stock cars.

I have almost 17K on my stock 97 GTS and that's way too low for me because I didn't drive it for 18 months. But it's in pristine condition as far as I'm concerned.

Bottomline to me is not miles but maintenance.

-Avi

 

[slaughterj]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cory:
I'm looking for a Genn II '97 on up RT/10. I'm looking to spend less than $60K and have seen some with an average of 10K miles which I can live with.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> I got my 98 rt/10 with 4800miles for $55k (including the hardtop), and there are a lot of comparable deals out there you can get with plenty of low mileage, plus if you are looking at one far away, a local viper owner would likely be willing to give it an initial look-over for you to save you the time and expense of traveling far for something that might not be what you want...