The cheap Viper deals keep finding him!

i feel terrible because my viper's been great and this one's being a cantankerous sponsor that's trying to kill itself well my 97 blue with white stripes dodge viper has been an iconic car for me and i've kept it for a long time bought that thing back in 2009 at 19 000 miles on it right now right about a hundred thousand miles and that was the one that actually goes back to my very first men wiki story of the what was it the super car that got me kicked out of my small town with that car being the one that i guess my most known for and i put the most miles on and enjoyed the most it has that interesting story kind of like the bird that flew away that came back i've just always loved it because if you need to cruise around in it slowly you can if you want to go fast you can there's no bs traction control or abs there's no cruise there's just nothing in the way it's just a raw exciting car that makes cool noises and you can put it sideways at any time if you want it's just been a really great companion to make memories in but i'd always had a fascination or just a little soft spot for those very early dodge vipers the the first ones the rt10s red the three spoke weird wheels side pipes no proper windows no proper top no door handles on the outside you got to reach in if you have the top on or the side curtains you unzip the window like a jeep or a 1960s british car and you open it up and you get in and i remember vividly i think perhaps our dad took us maybe like the henry ford museum where lenos literally up in detroit and uh just doing car stuff and we're coming back bored as kids are and car rides and being on i-75 in michigan are sitting there and i don't remember if my dad looked in the mirror and mentioned or we saw it first but we saw a red viper on the highway like in the wild the first year and it was a cold day i don't know the exact temperature we had jackets on everything like that and here comes a red viper no top two guys in it just cruising up they were like super speeding but they're coming up and they they come to pass the the car we're in we're little kids and i remember looking over and these two guys look like they came just straight off an air force flight line or something like you know leather jackets had i don't one guy probably had aviators on something patches and i'm just like i don't necessarily know what cool is but that's the coolest thing i've ever seen it's like an 11 12 year old kid you're just like yes and i remember that you know and you forget about it beyond that because my blue with white stripes viper was always really usable and the coops in many ways maybe a little prettier it's a more usable i don't say better car but more usable in the real world it's got windows that go up and down and door handles and locks so it's suited it well and i could never really justify you know i wouldn't never sell that to get an early one but i always always liked it a few years back when we moved to the toledo area i had worked at this small classic car dealership for a couple years and you know you look out for you gotta have inventory you gotta find cars to buy and i think it was maybe facebook marketplace or craigslist saw an early viper for sale it's built 92 vin number like zero zero zero 30. and there's some funny things about vipers where the bin number doesn't necessarily reflect the exact time that came off in the production it might be like when it was ordered but it was kind of cool and i remembered that i go check this out this car out from the guy that owns it just you know normal guy uh it was this one cool car had a little bit better exhaust he'd done a couple things to it maybe had a couple glitches and car look good i don't think it was then but he didn't want to come down to where i needed to be to buy it for the dealership the nature of reselling it i think he called me a few days or a week later and i just told him where i needed to be and he said yes drove the car over uh made the deal for the dealership and and that was that and of course when a car comes in the dealership you gotta access it and see what's going on i think i drove at home one night you know the early ones don't like sitting in traffic because of the way the fans come on so they can tend to get a little hotter they're a little more prone to blowing a head gasket so just some things like that that are easy enough to work out and of course they get a very bad rap from being too easy to wreck and the simple truth is that they have a lot of torque and you can't be an idiot in it you can't just stomp the throttle at any given time because you'll light up the tires and you better be ready for that kind of condition most people generally aren't and get a little more excited than their talent level can support in vipre so that's that's really where that bad rap comes from and you know in later days it comes from now the cars are vintage effectively you put historic plates on them and the trouble is tires don't necessarily just crumble the dust and there's people with vipers like this with low miles that have 20 year old tires on their heart as a rock and that's obviously setting you up for the same kind of scenario this car was good but just kind of the nature of the beast but for the dealership so i have to go over the car so do a couple little things to it sort of enjoyed that took a picture of the two cars together that was kind of neat put it on the uh showroom floor and represent it and uh gentlemen who was local of the area dennis i believe came and checked it out and knew his son nice young man actually helped the dealership a few times and he was really interested in it made a deal he ended up buying it and there's something in the back of my head like this is the car i should buy but i couldn't buy it i didn't have the space it didn't have the means at the time or anything like that but i i remembered it so it went away and every once in a while i would see them driving around and the car was actually kind of a complete pain in my ass for a while because we had sold it and suddenly like the fuel pump check valve went out so it would lose all its fuel prime and then it would have to crank forever or you'd have to turn it on and off until it would prime and then start and then the fuel pressure regulator went out and suddenly would skyrocket fuel pressure like 100 psi it was blowing out seals on the injectors and something else and then after he bought it on its own it sprung a fuel leak and caught on fire it was just a little fire though unfortunately the guy had a fire extinguisher and put it out and barely singed anything and i'm just like i'm in horse because i sold them this car it's as is it's now a vintage car but that's not what the kind of experience i want somebody to have so i'm just i feel terrible because my viper's been great and this one's being a cantankerous sponsor that's trying to kill itself but they were very nice people and understand they were carpe motorcycle people and was fine but i was just like oh my god and so the son they had and i think he was a teenager at the time when they bought a late teenager he would drive it the day i would let him drive it i'm like i don't know if this is gonna end well i don't know these people but this does not seem like the kind of car that you let a teenager bomb around in i didn't really think anything of it a number of years later a bump and knew everyone so i would kind of say hey you still got my viper i mentioned to them like if you sold that where would you be on it and they weren't like trying to make a bunch of money or anything on that just do it and so i was kind of talking about but i didn't want to waste their time until i was really serious but earlier this year i started getting serious because obviously doing youtube a little more space and i'd sold a couple things and i thought you know if i'm ever gonna get one of these things it probably better be now because they didn't make many of them i mean i think the first year of viper production what do they make like 250 cars or something so started talking with them and actually uh you know over a little bit of time you just want to kind of see where he was and money on it and um actually ended up making a nice deal on it i think i bought it for 31 000 at 35 000 miles on it and they took amazing care of it that changed the head gaskets and all and and the son who i was like i don't know how this is going to go took amazing care of it so i think it goes to show that sort of taught me something i complimented them both on and the dad i'm like you know honestly i didn't that would be good but your son took amazing care of this i had actually financed part of it because i you know wanted to make it happen kind of added to collection i was excited you know it's kind of neat i don't i don't really want any other vipers but if i'm going to have two just two cars it's pretty cool to have the blue with white stripes gts and the early rt10 and so i was gonna i said well i can i can pay on monday something like that after work and then we get the car out he's like you know you don't understand it's it's in storage my brother's house it's buried in the back of the warehouse on lift with stuff under it i'm like all right well i can help you um and he said um well i said maybe around he we could do it on uh saturday i'm like all right so it was a kind of an unseasonably beautiful day um like late winter early spring this year and go over there early in the morning and uh show up and it was we just had a fun time and got to see some of the motorcycles and things they had that just were cool kind of making friends and the viper was buried up on the lift under a cover so we move all this stuff together and move some motorcycles out of the way and like uh lawn care equipment and everything and get the car down and there's a funny little thing those early vipers do where they immobilize themselves and you have to have a little jumper wire and like ground out one little wire for just a second it makes everything chill out so how to do that and also i learned the joy of getting upside down and head first into the footwell of the viper not actually very easily but we go to get it out and uh moving the cars around i say all right well where would you like to put it and we'll meet up on monday and he said you know what you just take it today if you want and i'm not gonna jump on that because i don't want him to be uncomfortable in any way and you know we've made a deal and i think part of the honor of buying a car is to not not expect anybody to do something they're uncomfortable with beyond the terms of it it's like i'm just helping you get stuff ready you can buy it on monday i said well actually i already have insurance on it and i'm like you want to see so i just emailed him my proof of insurance he's like have fun and i know it sounds like a little thing but it was fun to kind of take a picture with father and son they enjoyed it they had their fun they were going to go onto the next adventure but i suddenly got the opportunity to bring literally a childhood dream that were the models they were that early like vision you see in a dealership the thing that sparks your lost as a car guy later on but kind of that passing the torch you know because they say you never really own a car you just take care of it for the next owner or the next adventure but it's a beautiful day and it was really exciting to hop in the car i'd already known that car i know they took care of it to just get in it and drive home and my wife was home it was a beautiful day uh we had bought a fixer-upper home the year before and it was starting to be less of a fixer-upper so it felt good and my buddy andrew from another story was long that day too so i just go ripping home the stereo works and it was funny because i get on the highway and it's pretty cold and i've got my jacket and like glasses and everything on and it was a cold day on the highway not much different than when i was a kid and i saw those two guys on the cold day on the highway in the same car when i was 11 or 12 12 years old and so i turn on the radio and what comes on but ted nugent stranglehold and i'm like yeah this kind of works i know that's just a story of the beginning of how the the next chapter kind of the little viper family comes together and i don't really consider myself a car collector not trying to be a collector or hoarder but it's kind of comes that way but there's something really neat of having like two of the absolute most iconic american cars of the modern era there's a throwback to another time and it sort of reflects so much that i resonate with as a car person and the thing about it is the the blue car that i've had um i love the car it was the car that i think was most synonymous with my personality and the most miles i enjoyed the most and it got wrecked and it went away and i thought that chapter was over and then it got bought from insurance and the guy started fixing it and then i was able to buy it back cheap from him and fix it up the rest of the way so the story where it was kind of like the bird flew away but came back it was meant to be you know and now the red viper kind of has the same story i was working when i had more modest means just trying to sell classic cars and bought this car to resell and the people that bought it ended up becoming friends with them and then later it came back much the same way so there is the beginning story to another amazing chapter of casey and the dodge vipers shopping for insurance can be an absolute nightmare but it doesn't have to be thanks to policy genius they're our sponsor for this month at vinwicki and you can visit them at the link in the description below you tell them a little bit about yourself a little bit about your property and they find the best deal by shopping amongst all the major carriers at the same time in fact you can bundle things like homeowners insurance and auto insurance and the average user that bundles both of those things saves about eleven hundred dollars a year so be sure to check them out and thank them for their support of bin wiki

Channel: VINwiki

Views: 139,037

Rating: 4.8973579 out of 5

Keywords: Casey, Dodge Viper, VINwiki, Car Stories, GTS, RT10, RT-10, first gen, gen 1, viper, car buying, car dealer, car sales, automotive, car history

Id: ARFcIz4StL8

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 29 2021