2,500 mile road trip

[wkooiman]

Just got back (actually a week or so ago) from a 2,500 mile road trip. Miami - Little Rock - Kansas City - St. Louis - Nashville - Chattanooga - Atlanta - Miami.

We had a family reunion in KC. My brother/sister are in the Little Rock area.

It's nice putting some miles on my 98 GTS. It ran very well, except that the a/c stopped working on the first day.

Gas was $5.17 in Illinois, $4.67 in Kentucky, $4.29 in Georgia, and $4.75 in Florida. That's all for 87 octane, with the usual bumps for 91/93. Some states didn't have 93 octane.

I'm impressed with how well these cars do road trips. Remember in the day how the press described them? Very uncomfortable. Trying to **** you. Gas guzzler.

Mine has a Roe Racing supercharger, Gen-3 brakes, 3.55 gears, Belanger/Corsa, and Gen-5 gears. It's very comfortable, even on long trips. It's very easy to drive safely. And even with those mods, I think I did 18mpg. I didn't measure, but it's not much worse than your typical SUV. It's actually my daily driver. The only downside is worrying about parts availability, but I'll cross that bridge if I come to it.

It's fun on the track too. With the mods, I can drive it to the limit of the tires. Gen-3 brakes don't fade. Maybe they would with slicks. I don't know - but night/day difference between stock Gen-2 brakes.

 

[MoparMap]

They really aren't terrible cars for trips, though the storage space is pretty limited with the convertibles/roadsters. If you're just tripping solo it's probably plenty though. I've driven my gen 3 on a couple of long trips now. It was about 700 miles to drive it home when I bought it, plus I've been out to the east coast (I live in Kansas) once and to the Greenbrier resort for a car show once. Took it down to Austin to watch an ALMS race in the past as well. The ergonomics aren't amazing for my frame, but it's not terrible. I'll actually put my 6 point harness on when I do long trips every once in a while because it holds me up better and I can kind of slouch into it if that makes any sense. Makes it a little easier on my back. Summer driving I used to be able to pull around 20 mpg, best ever was coming back from Austin I had one tank that was 26.

I've never quite understood the press's distaste for them. Maybe the original ones that were pretty featureless and rough around the edges, but they've only gotten better and better every generation. A lot of that just depends on what you are used to as well. I always say you can daily drive a lawnmower if you're dedicated enough. I grew up with sports cars, so I'm used to having low slung stuff with limited storage space. Mine was my daily driver for a solid 8 years or so and is still my primary vehicle, though I drive my wife's 4Runner a fair amount now since she has a hard time riding in the sports cars with her back and I don't like getting the Viper out if I'm not going to drive it long enough to get everything up to temp. I've got a touch over 130,000 miles and have no plans of stopping.

 

[denniskgb]

wow you daily your viper...how many miles are on it?

 

[TexasViper35]

My Mamba has been my daily driver since 2008, but I don’t do 10’s of thousands of miles per year. She has about 58K right now. Longest trip was Tampa to Dallas, I guess 1500+ miles. I did check my fuel mileage a few times, always 28 MPG, that was highway mileage at 70 MPH in 6th gear, not bad at all!

 

[Crudayt]

interesting information

 

[MoparMap]

I think I was doing around 10-15,000 miles a year when I was still working in the office regularly and doing more weekend stuff with mine. That number has dropped a lot since then though. I'm probably more like 5000 miles a year now if that, but I've also been trying to spread the love to my other vehicles. Now that I finally have saddlebags my motorcycle gets more use for quick errands around town and running over to family members' houses. When I was regularly commuting it was pretty much ~60 miles a day 5 days a week going on the Viper since it was my only car with good A/C. My Dart doesn't have A/C at all though I did finally get the A/C working fairly well in my old Vette, at least as well as 50 year old A/C can work on those cars.