dodge-viper-probed-by-nhtsa 2005-2006

[flotter390]

http://www.motorauthority.com/news/1083881_dodge-viper-probed-by-nhtsa

The Dodge Viper (current SRT Viper preliminarily excluded) is a wild beast of a machine that demands serious attention from the person driving it. It's a high-strung super sports car that enjoys running on the ragged edge. For the 2005-2006 model, that ragged edge might come at a lower limit than you'd expect, according to a preliminary investigation by NHTSA.

It appears that the rear suspension knuckle could fail, which would result in a rather unstable ride. So far only two crashes have been reported, but since we're dealing with a small 2,500 pool of vehicles it's enough for NHTSA to take a closer look. There have been no fatalities from the two crashes, but it seems there has been at least one injury. Stay tuned on this one, we'll be keeping up with the NHTSA to try and find out more.

 

[PeterMJ]

Can we just have one thread about it?

 

[SEEEEYA]

only question I have is how long will the investigations go? do I look for an answer in a year or so? or can you actually follow this thru the NHTSA?

 

[bluesrt]

everyone that thinks they need theirs
replaced, i hope they replace theirs with a steel knuckle.... lol

 

[neo_rambo]

Why doesn't Dodge/SRT step up and recall it themselves to prevent future lawsuits of injury/death because of a faulty part? To think we own one of the most expensive cars that Dodge/SRT offers and they don't give two cents about the safety of their customers until something major happens like death or serious injury and as a result sued and have bad publicity for the brand.

 

[chorps]

Why doesn't Dodge/SRT step up and recall it themselves to prevent future lawsuits of injury/death because of a faulty part? To think we own one of the most expensive cars that Dodge/SRT offers and they don't give two cents about the safety of their customers until something major happens like death or serious injury and as a result sued and have bad publicity for the brand.

They never saw it as an issue because there hasn't been a direct finding of fault in 8 years of production?

If recalls happened because of any claim most cars would recalled constantly. A bureaucracy can be maddening but there is a process to be followed here.

Also, given the litigious nature of the U.S., the unfortunate side effect of admitting fault would be lawsuits anyhow, so I doubt much face/money would be saved.

Also, even if a part was deemed to be faulty, you'd probably want to investigate the scope of failure and the scope of production before you did a recall. Waving a blanket recall flag is going to cost millions without verification, and may not even cure the issue.

Off the top of my head, I can see you'd want to know, how is the part failing? Is it driver error? Is it maintenance or abuse or storage? Does it happen new, or fail over time? Is it a design, production, supplier or service failure? How many units does it affect or does it affect all of them? What kind of replacement are you putting in? Can you verify that the new part won't fark up some other part of the system, causing further issues. How are the parts going to get replaced and when will they get into the dealer's hands? Do the techs need training on how to inspect for original part fault (if necessary) to diagnose replacements?

I don't think Dodge/SRT doesn't care but try to be look at the reasons behind the failures before pointing fingers.

 

[CaptainDavid]

Can we just have one thread about it?

Ditto Pete, I know of at least 4 threads