(Part of) Viper frame is soft like a butter

[madman]

In this thread http://www4.forum.viperclub.org/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=UBB21&Number=691914 I was reporting frame 'imperfections'. During recent suspension height adjustment work I thought 'what the heck, let's fix the arm support thing' since I was headed to see the alignment guy due to a suspension work anyway.

Before then I visited a local Merc/chrysler service place and had guys looking at the arm supports - with the consensus that this is a factory matter and not a 'use damage'. Unfortunately they also said that although DC sells Vipers in Europe because my car is from US they can't do any warranty repairs despite the fact that I was first owner of this car and did not make a speculative purchase (I lived in US for a while and brought the car with me). Emhh... So much for the global economy, kinda *****, doesn't it...

Anyway - back in my garage and with positive spirit I took couple wrenches and got to it. To my surprise - and let me put this in caps - I WAS ABLE TO BEND THE ARM SUPPORTS AND IN THE MIDDLE! Only by applying gradual force (and not a great one, I was laying on the floor under my car) through the wrench I was able to bend the arm support easily to where I needed. This was even more stunning because I didn't have the arms down, I had them only relaxed so you can imagine what kind of support did I have for the wrench.

Now - what's worse - in case that the excentric bolt has a little uneven edge and the arm support has a little uneven edge of the excentris stop (look at the pictures in the other thread) - and this can happen easily from multiple alignments - the arm support bends back just by turning the excentric bolt.

I don't think my car has an extraordinary frame so I am thinking this 'feature' is in every one of approx 10000 Gen3 cars produced to date. So I am comforting myself that there must be an engineering explanation as to why these hangers should be made from such soft metal... And these must be truly different kind of engineers then **** because when I was putting Bilstein PSS9 on my S2000 I don't remember seeing this week arm supports.

I wish a great sleep to all of us

 

[Lee00blacksilverGTS]

I strongly suspect that others wiser than me will tell you as they did on your other thread that this is normal and with good engineering reasons behind it. There a lot of these cars on the road and there are no reports of failures in this area even under very heavy racing use.

 

[jpas]

I was doing some work on my car the other day and was looking at the suspension mounts on my car. They are perfectly square and I just had an alignment done. These are weled to the frame, so they will be pretty soft due to the heating during the welding process. The weld bead is large and all the way around the mount, so you can imagine the material temp would high enough to anneal it to close to T-0. It is very different from a unibody car like the S2000.

 

[418viper]

good question to bring up on the SRT forum with the engineers

 

[Racer Robbie]

I have been told that there ae soft and one of two things to look for when thinking of buying a used viper. the other is to look for cracked powder coating on the frame in the front and rear clip. Don't quote me here but I would guess these are soft as to provide some crush zone in an accident.