Dodge Viper (Gen 2) Buyers Guide & Review 1996 - 2002 GTS & RT/10

this is a 1996 Dodge Viper GTS and this is a 2002 Dodge Viper GTS the start and finish to the generation 2 Dodge Viper in the 90s dodge offered the most performance per dollar of any car in the world it was a back-to-basics super cart capable of exciting any driving enthusiast it was and still is the ultimate American sports car now over two decades later I'm still blown away by the looks of this car and the fact that Dodge even built it Viper was not just king of the American cars it was a world beater dollar-for-dollar you could not find a better car in the 90s big horsepower tons of torque and low production numbers with the looks to back it up single-handedly Dodge Viper started the modern-day horsepower wars that are still being fought today the prices on these gentoos they're starting to rise and finding a good clean Viper is getting harder and harder if you're thinking about getting a Gentoo Viper you might want to do it sooner than later but what your gen 2 is best for you these cars are very dependable and extremely well built but a lot of them have been wrecked and there was a lot of running changes over the years I'll explain these changes and things you need to look for I also share with you which one of these is my favorite I'm Cody Reich longtime Viper enthusiast and I've been lucky enough to own nearly a dozen of these Vipers many of them being gin too and each time I would buy a new Viper I would document it to preserve history I've also served as the vice president and president of the Viper Club of America for my region and I was extremely active in the Viper community when these cars were new before we go over all the changes from year to year let's get some basic knowledge that all potential Viper owners should know let's head over to the 96 tour faults to buy a 1996 Dodge Viper GTS brand-new in 1996 you had to already own a Dodge Viper r/t 10 is it true or false it is a hundred percent true dodge took a page right out of Ferraris handbook and did a customer appreciation voucher so if you purchase in 1992 to 1995 Dodge Viper r/t 10 and you still owned it you receive a voucher that would allow you to purchase a GTS you could take that voucher to any dodge dealer turn it in and they would fill out a purchase order and you would be able to order one of these unfortunately a lot of those vouchers got sold on handshake deels and we're actually not sold to the original owners of the RT 10 but kudos to dodge for trying that customer appreciation plan let's go ahead and start talking about purchasing a Gen 2 Viper so if you're interested in buying a used Viper now one of the most important things you could do is get a CARFAX on the vehicle that will help you understand some of the history of the car also do a PPI PPI is a pre-purchase inspection make sure you pay a professional to actually look the car over another thing you can do is get on the forums and post some pictures and ask for some help google the VIN number and you can take the VIN number to the Dodge dealership and actually have them run it and they'll tell you all the service history on the car and the options that the car came with first let's start talking about some of the things you'll need to know if you buy a Viper one of them is how do you open this hood this is one of the most impressive brilliant designs in all of automotive history this clamshell hood is absolutely awesome and whoever designed it is a genius the way you do it is you actually reach under here and there's a little lever and you just pull down on that lever and then just reach up underneath here and release the safety latch and the hood will come up a little further move to the sides of the hood and if you have two people great each of you stand on each side and you both lift super easy but if you're by yourself no problem just reach out to the center and pull up as you guide the hood up now with the hood in the open position you have great access to this engine you can do any maintenance you need to do and you don't have to worry about leaning over paint or scratching your paint one of the things you might notice on the 96 through 99 hoods these were actually fairly sharp right here and what was happening is it's right about pocket level and those were catching and breaking off so dodge said you know what we could probably make that a little better and in 2000 they started rounding these off so helps without actually catching on those pockets and breaking off one of the things you might notice is their speakers in this hood on each side of it both sides the driver's side is just to match the passenger side this is the only one that functions and it's actually not a speaker it's a vent for the AC now if your hood does not stay open that could be a sign that it's actually been repainted what happened is these hoods were designed to actually stay open with a certain amount of weight and when you repaint them you might be adding a half a gallon of pain and a half a gallon of clear coke you know and you want a couple coats of clear because you want it to be super shiny well all that wait you know that could a add eight nine pounds to the weight and that could actually start it to actually start closing and not staying open it's not a for sure some of these hinges can wear out but that is one of the signs that the hood has been repainted and if you want to check if you have happen to have a car that has factory stripes one of the things you can do is you can actually run your finger over the stripe all Gentoo 96 to 2002 dodge vipers with factory stripes were put over the clear coat the factory had a a jig system and a laser system to tape these off and they are actually are extremely straight so that's one of the ways that you could tell that also works on the fascia so you can actually get down there and just run your finger over it very softly and you'll be able to tell if that stripe is over or actually under the clear coat so when you're ready to close this hood it's actually pretty easy to do it's everything in Reverse you start to guide it down you reach out into the center and you support the weight of the hood and you control it as it goes down and you watch the guides on either side once those are in position you come to the front here and it's easy to want to just push down right here and close it but you want to avoid that if you can at all costs the reason being is multiple times closing it over and over and over can actually cause it to stress crack the hood and the paint if you were to look underneath here you'll actually notice that the hinges are much much much higher so that's where you want to put your hands up on the hinges and then close the hood you'll notice the fit and finish on these 96 all the way through the 2002 is really really good and that's because the earlier hoods which were known not to fit were the resin transfer molding compounds so you got much better fit and finish and that's one of the ways you can tell if the cars been in an accident you can actually come and look at all the gaps because when this hood was put on at the factory they actually had laser measurements that gave him a shim report and that shim report told them where to put all the shims to line everything up once this involved in an accident it's super hard to get it to line up so that's just one of the extra ways that you can kind of can go hey yeah you know maybe I should look a little closer because those gaps look a little off now big gaps don't necessarily mean the cars been in an accident it's just one of those little things that you can look for that will help tell you some of the history that you want to maybe look a little further into the frame so let's go ahead and turn our attention to the fascia now and talk about some of the things you can look for all gen2 fascias got a viper emblem on them so that's something you can check for make sure it's there make sure it's the right color for that model and year and then you can check and see if the stripes are factory again you'd know that they're gonna be over the clear coat but then you can follow them down and on the bottom of the fascia there's a little lip and if that lip is not painted that's how the factory did it that's okay but when it's painted that's an indication the stripes we're at it after the fact while you're down there you want to check and look a lot of these cars ended up with a lot of scrapes on the bottom they're really difficult to drive because they're so low so one of the things that happens is when you come up to a driveway or an elevation change they'll scrape one of the tricks though is that you can take those driveways at a 45 degree angle and what that does is it puts one wheel on the elevation change before the other raising the front end up faster that'll help protect your car from getting scrapes down there one of the other things is look at the bolts that hold the fascia on these were painted off the car at the factory so if it's been repainted on the car sometimes those will be painted also and that's not a good thing so other things you can look for is along this bottom corner out here there's a clear piece of 3m tape now all the Gentoo Vipers got this now there might be a super-early 96 that got out of the factory without it but I've never seen a Gen 2 original car not come with that on it so that's a good indication if that's missing that the car has been repainted fog light covers some of them got it some don't we'll cover those in the year-to-year changes the other thing you want to look at is the headlights now these are very expensive headlights there's a little laser in here well that's what people think it is it's actually a level and it's it's orange and sometimes that will fall or break off so you want to just peek at that make sure it's in place and straight and level and make sure that there's no yellowing or cracks in the headlight so while you're down here you might peek over at the wheel you'll notice that the caliper says vipir on it that's white if that's yellow that's usually an indication that the cars been raced or tracked because normally that's white and the heat will turn it yellow under hard braking so let's go ahead and pop the hood and take a look at the engine bay how cool is this the Viper engine bay the first thing that stands out is just how massive this engine is it's huge 488 cubic inches it's massive and not only is it big it actually sits really really really far back now that was by design because what they wanted is they wanted to engineer this with as much weight as they could as close to the center gravity as possible to help handling for racing situations so what we're looking at now is a 1996 stock engine bay for a Dodge Viper and one of the first things you're gonna notice is this has the original accordion tubes now this was a very very very common thing to swap out because what happens is when the air goes through these accordion tubes they actually disrupt and it doesn't flow as smooth dodge figured that out and they made what's called smooth tubes those smooth tubes were put on the 1998 GT twos and all of the ACR s along with the K&N air filter and it up the factory horsepower rating from four hundred and fifty to four hundred and sixty so what do people do now they go out and they put smooth tubes on it k ends and pretty much every engine now is four hundred and sixty so depending on if you want to get more horsepower out of your car or you're looking to keep it stock you want to pay attention to see what tubes are there this is also a stock airbox that was a pretty common modification so when you're looking under here you want to do the basics check the oil make sure that the brake fluid has the right color is at the right level and do all that basic stuff but you also want to be paying attention to the smaller stuff like the exhaust that was a pretty common modification so if you're looking for a stock exhaust there was manifolds early on and they changed the tubular headers later and we'll go over those as we talk about each year and the changes but they all had heat shields and that was a pretty common thing to have to remove if you were going to aftermarket headers so that's something to pay attention to also there's some different types of fasteners from the factory and decals those changed over the years - the other thing you want to kind of pay attention to is the power steering cap now this cap was made of a slightly different material than the reservoir and so as it heats up it cools down heats up and cools down it sometimes can work its way loose and if it works its way loose it can come off and I've seen cars burn to the ground because that fluid got on the manifold the exhaust manifolds and so you want to go ahead and make sure that that's tight also some other things that you want to be aware of is the stock spark plug wires originally they were dated so that's something you can look to to see if those have been updated changed out or maybe you're looking for an original car and you want those date codes on there also if you ever have to jump this car or you want to charge it which is pretty common to put a trickle charger on it the actual connection is right here for the positive it's under this red cap and down below there's a negative now that's how you jump it and how you actually keep it charged but if you need to change the battery the batteries in the rear it's in the wheel well we'll cover that a little bit on the driver's side so those are some things that you need to know when you look under the hood of a Viper a kind of a thing that's not you need to know but you can look for is the ABS now we know 2001-2002 were the only gen to buy purse to get abs but one of the things is they also changed the lines they all went to black brake lines so the earlier ones have the silver brake lines that's the way you can tell but you can just look at the year and that will tell you also if you look at the wipers they actually are kind of unique in that they lay on each side so if you're looking at them sometimes they can get swapped out the driver's side always goes on top of the passenger side so you can look at that the last thing you might want to look for is just there's a hood pad and it's really neat because it's got this embossed sneaky pete which is the name for the Viper logo on the Gentoo so go ahead and look and make sure that that's in place and that pretty much covers it under here I think we'll go ahead and turn our attention to the interior now and take a look inside the Viper so we're getting ready to check out the interior and we're gonna open the door you want to make sure that the alarms off and earlier of Gentoo Vipers would honk their horn when you turn off the alarm the later models they would actually just flash their lights twice and that's how they would tell you so you wouldn't hear it but the keys there's two different fobs each year Viper got a key fob and a key now to get in you had to unlock it with the key fob there's no actual keyhole this is a 1996 97 98 and I'm pretty sure most of 99 key fob no 98 97 96 s came with the later one the round one this was later now I have friends who have bought brand-new 99 s and got this one I've had people who have bought cars used and told me oh this is the original one and I don't know if that's true or not I do know that either in 99 or 2000 this was the model you got this round one they will both work you can sync either one of them to a car but if you're looking for originality this is the earlier style this is the later style all the way up to 2002 they both work perfectly fine now when you push the button it has a rolling code it resets and it resyncs with the car so it's hard for it to be broken into our cut our catch that code that's pretty cool also the thing that happens though is if this car alarm goes off it's gonna honk the horn and flash lights for like two and a half minutes and then it'll shut off I think the lights might flash a little longer after that but when you come back to the car and you go to unlock it and you open the door it's gonna honk three times and that's to tell you hey the alarm went off somebody was messing with your car there's also a fuel cutoff which is really cool so yeah somebody messes with the car shuts the fuel off they can't steal it so how do you reset that well that's a good point I don't know exactly how a hundred percent I think you have to push the lock and unlock but and that might do it I've also heard that you have to hold down both buttons to sync it I've had such good luck with these cars I've never had to have to resync any of these alarms so they've always just worked but later on the in the model years they did put a reset key hole and I'll show you where that's at when we talk about the running changes but that's something to be aware of so before I get into the cars I why I like to look and make sure that the date coated glass is all correct so before I open the door I'm gonna glance down and each piece of glass on here has the year that it was manufactured so if for any reason this has a 98 and a 99 and then mm and then a 96 on the other side if those dates are all messed up that's a red flag to me that oh this thing could have been in a situation where it broke all the glass now whether it was broken into or in an accident it's just a red flag so I like to check and make sure they all match now it's the front windshields been replaced for a rock chip that's not a big deal that happens but it's just a telltale that hey yeah you know what this is all original if it has all the correct date codes on it then what I want to do is I'm going to look at the stanchion right here now in 1996 through 2002 GTS they're all gloss except for the RT tins and I don't know why maybe somebody will share with us why but the RT tins work this matte textured finish so not sure why they did that but most likely it was done so it would match the RT 10 sports cap pad so let's go ahead and open the door when we open the door we're paying attention to how much it drops and sags these doors are actually pretty heavy for what they are they've got this is the first year roll up windows how awesome is that the actual door locks whoa who would ever thought that was important so we got all these cool features on this door now but that added a lot of weight to it so what has happened is those doors overtime will sag now dodge knew that was going to be a problem and they actually put weight over it when they were installing these doors they would pre sag it so they would actually bolt it up hang this weight over and try to pre sag that door I've had great luck with these doors not sagging but I've seen other cars and people have told me they've had problems with it sagging so that's something you want to be aware of that you want to pay attention to also you open up the door one of the first things you're gonna look down and see is this a side seal right here now the catalytic converter is inside here and that's extremely hot so what can happen is it can boil the paint so you want to look at the paint condition on the side seal and also inside here there's a sticker that warns you that the side seal is hot that sticker can actually get hot and actually change color too so pay attention to the damage that might be happening down here if the car's gotten really hot in the catalytic converters also this is the only part in the car the body panel that's aluminum so it actually can dent up so be aware of that you might want to pay attention to see if there's any dents another thing you could look for is on the end of the door over here are two stickers one of them just going to be the tires and the size and the weight and the and the PSI that they want in them the other one is the important one it's the VIN sticker that's gonna have the VIN that matches this car and you want to check and make sure it does match with the VIN that's up on the dash and if you're curious it's kind of cool because they actually put the day the month and the hour that this car was assembled which is really neat so now we got the door open and we're gonna pay attention to the door first we've got an emergency a pull handle here so if you ever get in a situation where you lose power or you're mergency need to get out of the vehicle you can manually pull this and it'll open up because these doors are electric that's the necessity of that handle right there or if the car loses power you can use the key to access the back rear hatch on a GTS or go through the rear window on our t10 and simply reach through and pull the emergency handle and open the door that way the other thing you got in here is a speaker and then the door handle lock and unlock now those get power through a wire that is connected to the main body here it's inside this accordion sleeve now the opening and closing of this door a lot sometimes can wear that out and those wires can fray and disconnect so check and make sure the speakers work and check and make sure that the door lock and unlock is working and now you can imagine the driver's door is the most important to check because you know they both get used but the driver's door gets used a lot more so this is the one that's most likely to sag and the most likely to have problems with that wire connection in there so the other thing you want to look at is there's rivets right here holding this quarter panel on those rivets are not painted like we talked about before all these panels were painted off the car so those rivets from the factory we're never painted so let's go ahead and get in one of the first things I like to do is move the seat belt fastener out of the way because when you when you sit on it and you bend it over it actually could create damage to the seat so I like to push that out of the way before I get into the car so let's go ahead and get in and take a look at the interior now alright how cool is this we're sitting inside the Viper right now and this is such a cool cockpit it is well designed well laid out very very comfortable one thing I should have said before I said was you need to pay attention and look at the bolster on the driver's side seat it wears out quite a bit from all the people getting in and out of it over the years so that's something you want to be aware of and kind of look for the other thing is all generation to Vipers and for that matter all Vipers are manuals and so this has a six-speed manual transmission and when you're driving it something to be aware of it has a two three skip so what happens is for emissions if you're driving and you're in the RP rpm range between 1,200 and 2,000 I think it is and you go to shift it's going to want you to skip two and three and go right to four so it locks you out it's a 2/3 lockout now it's easy to drive around that you would just drive from first to second before 1200 rpm or you wait till after 2000 and most people just learn to drive around it and it becomes normal I don't even notice it anymore but some people to actually do disconnect it so that's something you want to be aware of you'll see on the dash when you're driving you'll see this little up I think it's yellow or orange but it's an up arrow and that's your skip shift so it's wanting you to skip up to fourth gear and it's gonna lock you out the other thing you have to be aware of as member we talked about this this engine is so huge and so far back that bellhousing is pushed into the cockpit a little bit and what happens is the side effect of that is we don't get a dead pedal we sit a little bit sideways and we don't have anywhere to put our foot well that doesn't matter it gets it's comfortable to drive and you hardly notice it but I wanted to make you aware of it and even to make it more comfortable what they do is they have this little dial right here that will actually spin and you could adjust the pedals four inches forward or backwards and that helps make it even more comfortable but don't kid yourself this is a tight cockpit if you're over six one maybe even six two you're probably not going to feel as comfortable as I am and if you are taller they do make a seat lowering kit speaking of the seats they're very comfortable leather they've got a little pocket right here and down below here there's a little rubber ball that you can pump up and it actually inflates a bladder in the lumbar support which is really cool because it gives you a little bit of support there you might want to test that out and make sure it's working and holding air so that pretty much covers everything I wanted to cover in here so what I would like to do is step out real quick and I want to show you something else here so I don't know if I can do this I might have to set it down but originally these cars they have a pocket behind the seat so I'm gonna go ahead and and just move the seat forward here real quick and so what I've done is use the lever down here to pull the seat forward and there is a pocket behind here and if it hasn't been taken out already you can reach back there and there should be two things should be the manual and a VHS tape and so what you get originally is this VHS tape that shows you how to operate your vipre and it covers a few things you can see on there what it covers and then you also get a manual and inside here it's going to have your little tool here in the center this is for removing the center cap on the wheels it's got your owner operators manual it's got all the extra laws and some paperwork in here so if it hasn't been already taken out you can look in there and see if it's still back there while you've got the seat forward another thing you might want to consider checking is this rear bulkhead if anybody has ever put a five-point harness in here sometimes these get cut out so you want to be aware of that so that's the interior let's go ahead and take a tour around the back of it now and take a look at the rest of it the rear batteries located on the driver's side rear wheel well to get access you need to remove the wheel to remove the wheel you got to Jack Takara to do that you need to pick the car up underneath the side seal here there's a spot that indicates where to jacket it's marked by a rod that's welded into an oval into the frame that's where you want to pick the car up from once you got it up in the air take the tire off you're going to get access to a panel back here that you remove there's a couple bolts and I think there's a pushpin and you'll pull that cover off and it'll give you access to the battery the biggest difference between a GTS and the r/t 10 is definitely the back of the car the GTS has a double bubble with a long glass and like a built in wing and then the RT 10 has a smaller window with a large trunk area and so when you're back here one of the things you want to look for on both of these cars is the exhaust all gen2 Piper's have a sinner rear exhaust and it is very common for those to be replaced there's actually three things that people would do they would either replace just the rear muffler and that would they would replace it with like straight pipes that would increase the sound definitely add a little bit of more throaty deeper sound to it or they would do what's called a catback system now we know that inside these side seals there's the catalytic converter the resonator and then the muffler and back so a kettle a catback system would be everything behind the catalytic converter would be replaced and the third thing that they would possibly do is do what's called a High Flow cat with the catback system so they would replace the stock catalytic converters and they would put in High Flow ones now the reason people would do that is it would increase horsepower because it increased flow it would also keep the side seals a little cooler so there'd be less chance that you would actually get any of that paint to bubble up and so those are some modifications that you want to be aware of now I'm surprised there's any stock Vipers out there based on the amount of takeoff exhaust systems that I've purchased over the years it is surprising that any of these are still so be aware that you want to look at that it's not a big deal if it has a been replaced it's a bolt-on situation you can bolt the stock ones back on if you need to also you want to look at the gaps back here this is another indication possibly that the cars been in in an accident or some sort of incident if these gaps don't line up really well this top section this panel is actually glued down so it's very hard to adjust once it's involved in an accident another telltale sign that you can look for are these back brake lights and marker lights they actually have a date code on it which is really cool now in this situation these lights are date coded February of 96 which is 100% correct for this car because all 96 s were actually very late bill cars but it's more common that you would see dates almost a year or so are even further in front of the car because these cars weren't all built late so for example if you have a 1999 it wouldn't be out of the question to see a late 98 or even a 97 date code in one of these so what you want to look for really though is if you have a 96 97 Viper and you're seeing 2000 2001 lights that's usually an indication that there's been some damage in the back the gas filler on both the RT 10 and the GTS is over on the passenger side the GTS got a racing style gas filler cap and the RT 10 had a body colored lid that flipped open and that's how you would fill the gas tank let's go ahead and talk about some of the paperwork that you would get when you buy one of these cars brand new so what paperwork came with these cars originally well one of the most common things you're gonna want to ask for when you're looking at buying a used Viper is does it have its window sticker every Viper got a window sticker and you've heard the term sticker price well what that means is what was the price listed on the sticker all these window stickers will also indicate all the options some of them if it was built for somebody would actually list their name too so you want to look and see if you got a window sticker now this one is an original one that was not put on the car when I bought a new car I don't ask to get two stickers so the one that was on the car and I actually got an extra one that's not very common some things that you might not see still with the car but did come with the car because there was a purchase order at some point when that car was purchased new there was a contract that was written up and if they've got that you want to make sure you get it because that's a good documentation for the car another thing is you're going to need a bill of sale but also ask if they have the previous bill of sale so if they have the paperwork showing when they bought it that's good documentation that you want to keep with the car if you can some other things that you want to ask for is service records now you can go to your dodge dealer and they'll run the VIN number and show you all the service records if they did the service if the service hasn't been done by Dodge make sure you get some receipts that show what's been done to the car and that you can continue to build that service record as you own it so some other things that are not as common that you might want to ask if they still have especially if you're purchasing from an original owner is there some thank-you letters now you would get these letters directly from DaimlerChrysler but they would actually stay the dealership who you purchased the car from so there's some thank-you letters that you would get when you're buying a car and Dodge was real big about supporting the Viper Club of America which was really cool it's a great club and it still is a great club you would also get these thank-you letters and they would be embossed with the cool logo the sneaky pete and they would just thank you for buying a car and introduce you to the viper club of america and you would get your membership that way some less really less common things would be a copy copy of the MSO or certificate of origin so all the cars started out without a title they would start out with an MSO and you take this down and you would title it so some people would keep a copy of that before they registered entitled their car the first time other things that's not as common also as a invoice so the dealer would have an invoice you might get a copy of that or the original odometer statement if they've kept a copy those are great to have all those came with the car originally some things people do keep is the little tag so if they've got these little tags that would come around the radio or the steering wheel and sometimes like the seat covers they all when they came from the factory they were all wrapped in plastic and they would have these labels on them and they would say they were made by oh who were they Johnson control anyway I always kept those some other things any warranty items like this roadside service and stuff that would have a VIN number on it you always want to see if you can get that if the owner has it I'd always keep the little tags but something that most people don't know how were with these cars but not originally shipped with the cars the factory had it is what's called a travelers pack so normally this would sit on the front of the car as it's being built so that they would know exactly what to build the car with so it would show all the colors the seats and has a couple other things in here that are kind of neat that I'll kind of just flip through real quick and show you it's got a so the original build sheet with the tape still on it that's for one of the cars I bought and this was a now this was an alignment piece and looks like it passed some emission a rolling test looks like they were driving it brake efficiency test some other safety and mission tests looks like there's instrument panel stuff so a bunch of testing items in there there's some more check sheets and the shim report that we talked about earlier so this is the factory shim report and let's see there's there's other things like the windshield old measurements but those are pretty cool now you probably are not going to find that because most cars didn't get that they didn't get shipped with it so don't be worried if that doesn't happen when you buy a car if you ask for it so those are some neat things let's go ahead and talk about all the changes from year to year so let's start with the 96 the iconic blue-and-white 1996 Dodge Viper GTS in 1996 all Dodge Viper generation 2 GT SS were blue with white stripes now there is exceptions and we'll talk about that at the end but this was the only model year that they did not offer red so there are our t tens that were built in 96 but the RT tens were actually generation 1.5 they used the newer frame but they used the old engine the old door panels no windows no air bags old - so it's not really considered a generation - this is a 66 thousand dollar vehicle brand new 450 horsepower 490 foot-pounds of torque gas guzzler tax would have cost you $2,600 this is the only year that dodge would not charge you extra for the stripes and what's kind of unique about these stripes is these are wider than the other years so they're slightly wider they're slightly closer together and they run through the license plate area so that's unique on a 96 you won't see that on other years also on a 96 you got a two piece cast aluminum wheel now this is a polished cast so it's kind of nice and shiny but it was welded and there was a two-piece and you can always look right inside there and you'll see that two-piece not as strong as the later one-piece forged also the forged wheels were a little shinier later too something to consider on this car one of the reasons people love this car is it has a great sound it has a cam that has a lot of duration and overlap and it creates a nice lumpy sound to it they use this cam in 96 and 97 and the reason they stopped using this cam was something called ng are neutral gear rattle well what was happening was because of that odd firing pattern of having five cylinders on each with an overlap on the cam a good duration it would create a vibration that that gearshift are left in neutral would sit there and vibrate and rattle so people were complaining and what would happen is they would change the fill they would try to add an attitude but they just couldn't get rid of it so later eventually they had to change the cam also unique to a 96 is this smooth - it's very matte and it's a it's a beautiful - but what was happening was it was difficult to keep clean show scratches really well so later on that's something that also changed - so these are all things that are unique just to a 1996 GTS also this year we talked about it earlier you get a key fob that was square you had forged pistons so later on that some will talk about that changed there is a recall on this car it's called the 998 recall and it has to do with some frame and some gussets in the crossmembers so under aggressive track driving what would happen is you could possibly crack that frame so dodge went ahead and welded in a gusset or had the dealer's welded in so you want to make sure that that was done correctly and you can have the dealers look that up and they'll be able to tell you also another thing you might have heard of is the 96 pace car edition so what dodge did is they had some decals that they would sell you that you could put on your car to make it look like the pace car edition there was no difference in any of the 96 Vipers none of them were special or unique that were different that were a pace car we're not all 96 Vipers our pace car basically the only difference is is if you spent the money and bought one of those I think they made maybe a hundred sets of decals and you put the decals on yourself none of these cars left the factory with those decals installed by the factory so what happened was I think they were having a hard time selling them so people who did factory pickups they were given a set of decals and then when they couldn't give away anymore they started selling I mean if I remember they were like blowing them out at half price and nobody was interested but now they're extremely hard to find and if you find a set well you probably want to hold on to it because it's pretty unique and rare so these are some things that are very unique to 96 Dodge Viper GTS and we'll go ahead and talk about the changes that happened in 1997 now the blue with white stripes was so popular 96 they carried it over into 1997 and the new color for 97 was red you could also get a generation 2 are t10 there was a 117 of those bill 53 of them were blue with white stripes 64 of them red now you could not get stripes on the red and that was true for the GTS two you could get blue with white stripes and they were going to charge you a $1,200 option for those stripes or you could order red with no stripes the stripes no longer went through the license plate area so they did that because the factory could save time not taping them off also MSRP on these cars didn't matter if you wanted the r/t 10 or the GTS it was going to be 66 thousand dollars and if you did order the r/t 10 you could delete the hardtop that came with it and it would save you $2,500 you could also save if you wanted to delete the AC the wheels they went from the two-piece to the one-piece they charge $300 to polish them now please remember these are polished aluminum with a clear coat so you would take care of your wheels the same way you would take care of the paint on the car the gas guzzler tax went from 2600 the year before it's now at $3,000 and it stays there for the rest of the generation to run all the way through to 2002 on the r/t 10 you could get color accents so what would happen is you would get a steering wheel a parking brake and a shift knob that would match your color you could also get tan seats with tan interiors however on the RT tens they were still using what was called a smooth hood it was the generation 2 hood but it was smooth it did not have the knack to duct or the vents and they were also using that generation 1 front fascia it was the last year they were going to do that so those are the changes for 1997 the new color for 1998 silver and the r/t 10 MSRP goes down to 64,000 while the GTS goes up to 60 6500 but the r/t tens now get the knack deduct and the vents just like the GTS and the newer fascia the RT tens interior was no longer color keyed and they all came black the price for stripes which you could only get on GTS it was $1,500 and not many people chose that option of the 447 red GTS is 98 only 11 of them came from the factory with stripes of the 288 silver GTS is only 21 of them opted for the blue stripes there was some interior changes the windows switch has now changed over from the old rocker style to a new toggle switch the dash changed from the smooth to the new textured which was easier to clean you also got a a passenger airbag cutoff switch and updated air banks there is now an alarm reset key hole located inside the top of the glovebox and also an updated alarm in the engine there was a cam update that actually changed the overlap and the goal was they were trying to solve that neutral gear rattle and improve admissions there wasn't an exhaust manifold update they removed and stop using the cast heavier manifolds and went to a tubular exhaust it saved about 20 pounds of weight on the car about 10 pounds per side one of the coolest cars ever built Viper wise came out in 1998 it was the GT 2 it was a $15,000 option and it was limited to a hundred cars they actually all went down in ving order that was rare for Viper they weren't normally built in VIN order it was to commemorate the gt2 LeMans victory they were all white with blue stripes they had smooth tubes they had K&N air filters so they were rated at 460 horsepower they also had gt2 badging and decals of blue interior racing harness a rear wing they got 18-inch BBS wheels they had lower side effects ground effects they had some winglets on the front fenders and they got a camera this disposable camera that was put in to the car when it was being built and what would happen is these crowd people would take that out and take a picture of every part that they were installing on the car so when you got your gt2 you took this camera down you got to camp the film this developed and you ended up seeing cool pictures of your car being built there were some other neat things and car covers that you got with that car but just a really rare and cool cool car 98 was a great year to be a Viper fan the new color for 1999 is black it was added to the red and silver options our t tens come in at an MSRP of six 5725 by the GT s's went up to sixty eight thousand two hundred twenty-five stripes they also bumped up in price from 1500 to 2000 this year again only available on the GTS so if you ordered a red card you wanted stripes you got silver you ordered a black card you wanted stripes you got silver you ordered a silver card you want to stretch you got blue it was the first year for the con yak Conley interior I think it was about a $500 option also they went from 17 inch to 18 inch wheels and they're polished and no longer is it an additional cost the radiator fan was upgraded it now has four rubber flaps on all four corners instead of the four doors on one side it definitely improved the cooling for the engine on the interior there was some silver accents that were added the door handled the ebrake the rings around the gauges and the ball shifter power mirrors remote hatch release the Sun visors went from vinyl to a little fuzzy cloth it was really kind of nice the fog lights are completely removed covers excuse me just a fog light covers are completely removed in 1999 also we're riding on Michelin Pilot sports now instead of the MX X threes there is one recall that you want to be aware of in 1999 and that is the 999 recall it affected all cars built from March first 99 through October 2nd 2000 and it effects the steering gear crossmember it needed to be inspected and gussets added it to it so the dealers could do that you just want to make sure that it was done correctly but probably one of the coolest options in 99 to happen to the Viper was the ACR package and it stood for American Club racer the very first year you could get that and it was on GTS is only you got BBS wheels you got the fog lights completely eliminated not just the covers you also got the deleted AC deleted radio and they did that to save weight so they were saying hey we're gonna sell you a race car you don't need all this extra stuff they gave you a five-point harness you got the smooth tubes with the K&N air filter which factory added ten more horsepower you got the adjustable shocks and you got a dash plaque that said hey you know this is an ACR and some ACR decals now a lot of people opted to buy back what was called the comfort package it was 910 dollars so you could buy an American Club racer for $10,000 spend a 910 more and they'll delete your AC and delete your radio to save weight and then put it back in for you for extra money yeah I know it seems kind of silly we used to laugh about it back in the day but it is true a lot of these cars ended up with the comfort pack package back on I'm still the ACR is a really cool package and it was the first year it was offered in 1999 steel-gray was added in the year 2000 it's a one-year color only black was continued and of course red you could still get if you wanted stripes on any of those GTS is now it's gonna cost you twenty five hundred dollars and the ACR package it's still at ten thousand dollars and of course if you want your a/c and radio back you're gonna have to pay the comfort package price of nine hundred and ten and that's on the GTS only of course the RT 10 MSRP 67,000 225 why the GTS MSRP sixty nine thousand seven hundred and twenty five you did have an option to get kanye Connelly interior this year and it was seven hundred fifty dollars if you wanted at heart our t10 hardtop it'll run you twenty five hundred dollars if you just wanted the tonneau cover it only be $250 the big change though is there's an updated cam six degrees less overlap for a smoother idle they also updated the lifters to help smooth out that idle and fix that neutral gear problem that they've been fighting but the biggest change of them all is they went from the forged pistons to the hyper eutectic cast Pistons now they did that because it allowed them to build the tighter tolerances get better sealed they could get better compression they could get better emissions unfortunately though as good as those hypereutectic pistons are they don't hold up well to big horsepower so if you're thinking about modding your VIPRE and you want to put on a huge super charger or get big horsepower by force-feeding it you probably want to go with a forge piston engine besides that this engine is very very durable and it actually holds up really well not having the expansion of the forged pistons makes this engine start up an idle and smooth even when it's cold a big change for 2001 but before we talk about that the yellow and sapphire blue are our new colors both wonderful colors steel gray and black have been discontinued and of course you can still get red if you'd like stripes with any of your GTS is you're going to pay $3,000 now the ACR package still comes in at $10,000 but the comfort package which buys back your a/c and radio is now up to $1100 our t10 MSRP is sixty nine thousand two hundred twenty-five where the GTS MSRP is at seventy two thousand two hundred twenty-five the big deal this year it's a first year for abs brakes this is huge in panic situations are even on the racetrack the right front wheel of the Viper has about 80 pounds less riding on it and it has earned a reputation of locking up under hard braking if you plan to modify your engine and you want big horsepower those 96 up to 99 forged pistons work best however if you plan to drive your Viper aggressively or on a race track the 2001 and 2002 are by far the best choice they have all the frame reinforcements from the factory and ABS really you can't go wrong with any year Viper but having that ABS is huge I love the 2001 and 2002 s there wasn't a lot of changes for 2002 the MSRP on the r/t 10 did go up to 71 thousand seven hundred and twenty five while the GTS remained the same the ACR package was still the same and stripes were still at three thousand dollars graphite metallic replaced the sapphire blue color yellow was still an option and if you got stripes on yellow they were black just like they were in 2001 and red of course was still an option but the big deal in 2002 this was the last year of the generation 2 Viper and to commemorate it what the factory did was they sold a final edition group for $3,000 you got one of the very last Vipers to come off the line the last 360 were all red with white stripe GTS they had red stitching on the steering wheel they had red stitching on the shifter they had a dash plaque that had a number now that number did not correspond to the order they went down it was randomly assigned but still how cool is that to be able to have one of the last 360 Vipers ever built generation 2 what was also unique this was the first time ever the Dodge had offered white stripes on a red Viper so very unique to be able to get one of those let's talk about some exceptions and one-off cars in 1996 we know that all the GT s's were blue with white stripes except there was three that were built for Chrysler executives that were white with blue stripes that was not an order form check box that you could hit and get a different color you actually had to be a Chrysler executive to be able to get that also in 1997 there was the blue with white stripes our t10 we know there was 53 of them however one of those was actually produced with no stripes and no colored interior so it didn't have the blue steering wheel didn't have the blue hand brake and the shifter it was a black interior now that was some special strings that were pulled for that customer to make that happen also in 1998 there was an r/t 10 that was shipped and I'm not sure if this was by mistake or on purpose but it was shipped with the Smoothie hood so it did not have the vents and did not have the knack to duck only one of those went out and I'm not sure why but it is kind of the exception now let's talk about some one-off cars the VCA the Viper Club of America worked with dodge to create some very special very rare cars in 2000 they had to make a GTS that was tricolor so it had black silver and gray in it what they did is they raffled that off I think it was like $100 a ticket and they maybe sold a thousand tickets and they took that extra profit put it back in the club and held events which was really cool and then dodge in 2001 made a BCA car that was an r/t 10 ACR it's like whoa really we all know that there was no ACR r/t tens but there was one and it was the VCA raffle car and if I remember correctly it was graphite with like a powder BBS black wheel really really cool obviously I didn't win because you don't see it here 2002 they did it one more time and what they did was a GTS ACR and they painted it the 96 blue color with silver stripes so it's like oh the iconic blue color the ABS and all the frame improvements like oh my gosh you want to talk about the best of the best those are some exceptions and one-off cars those usually don't come up for sale or at least they haven't that I've seen now hopefully you learn something you're probably wondering which one of these cars is my favorite you know and I'm gonna be honest with you I don't ever see myself without the iconic blue-and-white GTS is just it's the color that you picture when you think of a Dodge Viper but if I had to pick one I'm never ever not going to own a final edition all the frame improvements the ABS when I drive this car there's something special about it everything I love about Vipers is right here 96 to 2002 you can't beat them they're just one of the best cars ever durable they're just really built well and if you have an opportunity to buy a gen to go ahead and do it you're not going to be sorry Dodge did something special they said here's two seats some push rods and a ton of cubic inches now go have fun I mean these cars are so much fun to drive so if you get a chance everybody should own a Gentoo Viper hopefully you learn something and if you liked it please give me a thumbs up I'd appreciate that thank you so much

Channel: Cuda Cody

Views: 67,764

Rating: 4.9485807 out of 5

Keywords: Dodge Viper, Gen 2, Viper, Dodge, Review, gen II, Best year viper, buying a viper, best viper to buy, Gen 2 Viper, viper buyer's guide

Id: HIrJfwS-JDQ

Length: 49min 51sec (2991 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 09 2019