Here's Everything I Love about My Cheap DODGE VIPER (and Everything I Hate)

with all the mechanical issues fixed on my cheap 1995 Dodge Viper I can finally take this thing out and enjoy it I'm sure a lot of you if you're around my age you had a poster of this car or a model of it when you were a kid and dreamed of owning a Viper like me now a lot of times when you buy one of these poster cars they're pretty disappointing to drive in person you don't want to meet your heroes but in the case of this Viper I'm happy to report that there are no disappointments there is so much to love about this Viper but there there are a few flaws and given this cars reputation they could be fatal flaws you could die now the first thing I love about this Viper is the ease of maintenance unlike a lot of exotic cars of this time Italians especially the engines don't have to be dropped out of here three to five years for a belt service really there's no reason to do that at all because the hood the entire nose comes off with just a few bolts on the engine 400 horsepower v-10 it's a good old-fashioned American pushrod engine so it's super easy to work on I was able to take the heads off myself the wizard was able to put them back together and I didn't screw it up that much the whole job to fix that and a few other things was less than two thousand dollars try and get anyone to look at your Ferrari for less than two grand it's not gonna happen now once this car was put back together I got to take it on a shakedown cruise and I noticed the car was kind of overheating again uh-oh it actually was fine when I was moving but then when I was stopped at a lie the temperature would creep up and then the auxilary fans weren't kicking on this turns out to be another really easy fix these things electrically are very simple as well it took a wizard all of five minutes to find that the coolant temperature sensor wasn't sending out the right signal he replaced it and I was back in business now the cooling system is apparently the weak spot on these Vipers a lot of people are upgrading them especially if they're gonna track-day it but this one seems fine now in the dead of winter that may change come summer when I start driving it and if I want to track it or something and these Vipers were built to be high performance machines but what they're probably best remembered for is the look personally I love of the early ones with the three spoke wheels and the side pipes even though it'll burn your leg hair off and from every angle every angle this car is gorgeous just gorgeous it's so rare that a car that comes out as a concept actually gets built like the Viper and looks so close to the original concept usually by the time they make production they're so compromised and modified from the original vision that it looks nothing like what we had hoped but that's not the case with this Viper but still there are some weird things with this car that you'd think they would have taken care of when they went into full production it's kind of hard to believe this thing was an actual mass-produced car so when you look around closely at this Viper there's a lot of exposed wiring and computers that you can see on the passenger side Gilly just look inside it and there's a computer and inside it looks really cheap and there's a lot of generic cheap Chrysler parts in there that you would have found in a neon or a Stratos sir intrepid also there is no security with owning a Viper whatsoever anybody can get into this car through these zip through windows there's no exterior door latch on these first couple of years and you just open it from the inside there there's no lock same with opening the hood you access the engine from the outside of the car so anybody could go and open the hood of your Viper they knew what they're doing and I don't know what I'm doing there we go absolutely no security at all and look at that crazy engine then there's this ridiculous roof that they decided to put on this thing they call it that toupee because it looks so out of place and embarrassing on the car and really doesn't fit all that well also these windows definitely an afterthought they are right out of the Jeep Wrangler with half doors and when I sit inside this thing I can't see first oh oh but first of all there's the toupee which in my case it actually is a toupee because when I sit up straight I am poking through the roof and then when I close the door you can't see me and because this window is so low with this canvas that I have to duck down to look at what I'm pulling on in front of it's so dangerous in a car that's already very dangerous now obviously the Viper was meant to be driven without any of this stuff you just take it all off scratch the paint but even with the roof off I find it really uncomfortable to drive and that's because there's a lot of wind buffeting which is weird because it's meant to be driven with the top down now I know the solution to this would be wear a hat but I don't like hats so I ended up spending $3,000 for our hardtop setup that the wizard has just finished installing for me I spent a lot of money for a hat substitution but it's worth it the wizard wizard you have it that's a nice hat you have there let's get this thing on here so you've already done a little work here with the latches oh and I went for the double bubble top and that's because it has extra Headroom that way I don't look like big bourbon I'm driving this thing around obviously it still needs to be painted I'm gonna get that taken care of next week they also come with matching plexiglass windows which you can see the shape of this roof there's a little bit higher to where I can actually see out of it but it still slides in just like the old one lovely and then I have a little lock here with this sliding Plexiglas window and then I can close it and lock it actually have some semblance of security in this car which is nice but really I got this just so I could drive it and actually be comfortable which Viper and comfort don't really go together but Cadiz now with this car right when you're like this [Music] [Music] oh you have no idea how nice it is to be able to see up the side now and not hit my head on the roof this top is just perfect if it didn't have that rattle these windows I mean this is the best you're gonna get since you can't roll it down but it does have some drawbacks as I will demonstrate to you right now hi there I'd like a cheeseburger happy meal with ketchup only is the toy spider-man right now okay that'll be it thank you all right she didn't say hello back thank you that wasn't so bad hello come on Oh mm now if everybody wondering what a Dodge Viper drives like it's kind of like a bigger really powerful Miata which is what people have always wanted they want a Miata with more horsepower with some more pizzazz that's the Viper but I'm not sure if that's what people really want because this thing is an animal to keep on the road especially with the cold roads the cold old tires this thing is constantly struggling for traction which is never a problem with 100 horsepower Miata this is a car with the current government and safety man they said could never ever be built again there's just no way not not in big numbers anyways and even if Chrysler was able to do it they would be sued out of existence from all the idiots that would buy these cars and crash them like so many have there's so many wrecked salvage title Vipers out there ones that just got scrapped and the motors putting hot rods they'd have to install an infotainment screen just to have a liability waiver come on every time you hit the ignition before it starts you'd have to agree to that liability waiver so they wouldn't get sued out of existence now I still have a little bit of work to do here obviously that rattle is gonna drive me insane I don't know if it's a defective latch or this needs more adjustment we've already adjusted it once but also the alignment on this car is a little bit off and the tires are out of balance from sitting so much I still love it still love this thing don't get me wrong hole head is so good so good and the final thing that I love about this car is the incredible value you can find an early r/t 10 Viper for under 30 grand there's several lists online at autotrader.com slash oversteer which link below is my article and for that you get an automotive icon that's also super fun to drive I personally think these cars are way undervalued and I expect in a few years they'll go way up fingers crossed because if that happens this would be a rare win in my department where I actually come out ahead on a car and unlike a lot of exotics that go up in value this one doesn't cost a lot to insure and maintain so if I don't end up crashing it like so many others have oh I'll be doing really well with this thing thank you for watching

Channel: Hoovies Garage

Views: 578,435

Keywords: RT10, 1995, review, test, exhaust, problems, startup, roof, hard, top, conversion, tyler, hoover, hoovies, garage

Id: PWd8fReA8t8

Length: 10min 28sec (628 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 14 2018