New gen 2 owner here. This car was destined for the scrap heap, totaled about a month off the dealer lot back in 2000 at 309 miles. Took a nasty hit to the front chassis section but nothing that can’t be pulled fairly easily.
The hard part is the fact that the car sat up 5’ on a rack for decades I suppose at a friend’s body shop having parts torn off it to donate to other vipers. The plus side is, when I bought the car I got a lot of the damaged (some barely damaged) parts from the cars it helped save.
a few good deals later and I now have a complete body (albeit some heavy repair needed on the hood and minor repair rockers/sport cap/bumper).
The part you guys may hate is that this car will be getting a 6.4 gen 3 hemi from a scatpack that I picked up for cheap. I’ll be camming it and putting it on E to make somewhere in the neighborhood of 500+whp and using the ZF 8 speed it came with.
I know there’s a hellcat and hurricane swapped viper out there, but the goal for this car was always to stay true to its roots and be a bad ass time attack/road course car, not just a drag queen.
As much as I’d LOVE to fully restore this into an original viper complete with v10/6060, it’s just not worth it for this particular car. The cost would likely end up more than what I could have just bought a high mile complete car for.
Few goals I have for the car -
-Get it looking like a Viper again and somewhat presentable (on a budget).
-keep light with minimal creature comforts and take out weight where I can (while keeping it street friendly…just barely lol).
-weld up a cromoly cage, or possibly just a bar for it with some additional chassis reinforcement.
-build it in a way that makes it easily serviceable so I’m not afraid to beat the pistons out of it on road courses, auto-x half mile drags and every other fun thing I could bring it to.
I’d love to get out there and meet/cruise/race with some Viper clubs. I think anyone who grew up in the 90’s could agree these cars were the epitome of cool back then (and still). Not sure if any other car in history has ever been depicted so frequently in pop culture or had such a unique style. Despite mine not being much like an original, I’m still getting really hooked on the lore and history of these legendary cars and I still can’t believe I own one.
With how rare these cars are, and how many have supposedly been wrecked, it’s going to feel really good to get this thing up and running again. It’s the car that never should have ran again and somehow dodged (no pun intended) 25 years of being sent to the scrapper. I think if this car could talk, it wouldn’t be TOO upset with finding a 600bhp modern hemi/paddle shifter 8 speed between its rails instead of the v10/6060. I think it would just be happy to be alive . Can’t wait to start putting some (budgeted) love into this build.
As for my first question, I’ve been reading about the 998/999 recall (this is a 2000 model year RT-10 and was wrecked before the recall) so as I understand it , I’ll have to reinforce the rack aree only and not the toe arm / rear diff crossmember mounting points?
While I’ve got the chassis stripped down, are there any other points that could be beneficial to reinforce when seeing heavy track use? I could just go crazy adding gussets everywhere, but that’s also adding weight so I’d like to be as strategic about it as possible.
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The hard part is the fact that the car sat up 5’ on a rack for decades I suppose at a friend’s body shop having parts torn off it to donate to other vipers. The plus side is, when I bought the car I got a lot of the damaged (some barely damaged) parts from the cars it helped save.
a few good deals later and I now have a complete body (albeit some heavy repair needed on the hood and minor repair rockers/sport cap/bumper).
The part you guys may hate is that this car will be getting a 6.4 gen 3 hemi from a scatpack that I picked up for cheap. I’ll be camming it and putting it on E to make somewhere in the neighborhood of 500+whp and using the ZF 8 speed it came with.
I know there’s a hellcat and hurricane swapped viper out there, but the goal for this car was always to stay true to its roots and be a bad ass time attack/road course car, not just a drag queen.
As much as I’d LOVE to fully restore this into an original viper complete with v10/6060, it’s just not worth it for this particular car. The cost would likely end up more than what I could have just bought a high mile complete car for.
Few goals I have for the car -
-Get it looking like a Viper again and somewhat presentable (on a budget).
-keep light with minimal creature comforts and take out weight where I can (while keeping it street friendly…just barely lol).
-weld up a cromoly cage, or possibly just a bar for it with some additional chassis reinforcement.
-build it in a way that makes it easily serviceable so I’m not afraid to beat the pistons out of it on road courses, auto-x half mile drags and every other fun thing I could bring it to.
I’d love to get out there and meet/cruise/race with some Viper clubs. I think anyone who grew up in the 90’s could agree these cars were the epitome of cool back then (and still). Not sure if any other car in history has ever been depicted so frequently in pop culture or had such a unique style. Despite mine not being much like an original, I’m still getting really hooked on the lore and history of these legendary cars and I still can’t believe I own one.
With how rare these cars are, and how many have supposedly been wrecked, it’s going to feel really good to get this thing up and running again. It’s the car that never should have ran again and somehow dodged (no pun intended) 25 years of being sent to the scrapper. I think if this car could talk, it wouldn’t be TOO upset with finding a 600bhp modern hemi/paddle shifter 8 speed between its rails instead of the v10/6060. I think it would just be happy to be alive . Can’t wait to start putting some (budgeted) love into this build.
As for my first question, I’ve been reading about the 998/999 recall (this is a 2000 model year RT-10 and was wrecked before the recall) so as I understand it , I’ll have to reinforce the rack aree only and not the toe arm / rear diff crossmember mounting points?
While I’ve got the chassis stripped down, are there any other points that could be beneficial to reinforce when seeing heavy track use? I could just go crazy adding gussets everywhere, but that’s also adding weight so I’d like to be as strategic about it as possible.
BUDGET DODGE VIPER BUILD PT1!
The first installment of the budget dodge viper swap project aka Snek Plissken AKA ugliest viper on the planet aka *** have I gotten myself into. This vide...
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BUDGET DODGE VIPER BUILD PT2! Viper gets a 6.4 Hemi?!
Despite hours of mulling it over in my head, pricing out engine combos on paper and listening to suggestions from others , in the end the winning drivetrain ...
youtu.be
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