01/25/06 - Yesterday a long time dream of mine came true. The moons aligned and I purchased a Red 1997 Viper GTS. It's a stunning car with only 23,000 miles on it. After two days of driving it, I can honestly say that I am not disapointed. So far, the car has been everything that I envisioned it being and more! Having so much torque on hand makes it a blast to drive, and the extra 200lbs. that the Viper carries over the Z06 is not noticable at all. In fact, because of the lighter steering, smaller steering wheel and smaller cabin, the Viper actually feels smaller, and lighter than the Z06. Everyone who complains that the Viper rides too rough is a wuss. Ride in Jaime's Miata some time. ;) Yes, the Vette rides a bit smoother over the bumps but I honestly like the ride better. I "feel" like I'm in a sportscar when I'm driving it. Now I have to sell the Z06 though. I'm running an ad on Ebay and tomorrow a guy from a local Corvette shop is coming to take a look at it. Hopefully we can work out a deal. I need some money to pay the taxes on the Viper!!!

02/11/06 - I've started to make the Viper mine. :) Started out with a few little maintanance things like a solid cleaning inside and out and new gas struts under the rear glass. I absolutely had to get rid of that skip shift too, so I bought a little skip shift eliminator plug off of ebay. Works like a charm. The stock brakes squel like an old school bus (to the point of being really embarrasing) so I put on a new set of EBC Green pads last weekend. The new pads are quiet and they stop better. Win win, Yay! Last week I also put on a set of smooth tubes and K&N Filters. The air intake is louder, which actually sounds pretty cool. And today, a more significant change, we put on Random Technology's 3-inch high flow cats, silencers and cat back. It was a total PITA, but I'd do it all over again if I had to. It's so worth it! Bye bye UPS truck sound, hello, angry Viper from hell! Listen for yourself (wav file)! Here's a pic of Jaime tightening the exhaust hangers, and a similar pic of the exhaust winding down the side of the car and then inboard again to the rear. By the time we were finished, it was dark outside, so I'll take more pictures of the end product (and a few other goodies) soon.

06/18/06 - Viper: Before we left on vacation, I put new wheels on the Viper and forgot to post new pictures here. These wheels are SSR's and weigh almost half as much as the stock wheels do. Woot!

06/25/06 - Viper: I "Ashtonized" the Viper this past week. Put a pair of 1" orange stripes down each side of the car and added 1/8" pinstriping around the lip of each wheel.

07/15/06 - Car Show: We hustled during the week to prepare our cars for the July 15th Running of the Beasts. The miata needed some last minute repairs. We blew both the left and right exhaust gaskets on Friday afternoon. We also lost the top radiator hose at the same time, a casualty of the engine's torque twisting the motor sideways, pushing the alternator pulley into the hose. The Viper got it's stripes, and while it does look nice, I wish that the stripes were darker to better match the wheels. At least it's vinyl. When I catch my breath, I'll order another set of stripes and try again.

Our hard work paid off though. We drove 100 miles on Saturday, in scortching heat with the Pantera, Viper and V8 Miata and had no problems at all. The Viper brought home the "Most Wicked Beast" award from the car show in Santa Fe Springs!

08/05/06 - Viper: So, last week the Viper had a run in with an unidentified object on the freeway. Not good. It's currently at the body shop getting repaired, so the Pantera serves as our daily means of transportation. I miss it. :( booohooo! On the plus side, the Pantera does get better gas mileage than the Viper. 15mpg vs. 13mpg. lol

10/24/06 - Viper: Nearly three months after some freeway debris caused damage to the front of the Viper, I finally got it back from the body shop today, complete with some metallic dark bluish grey racing stripes painted on and buried under new clearcoat. The stripe color far exceeds my expectations and the clearcoat finish is stunning. The stripes are even more impressive in the sun, but we get home in the evening, so I had to shoot the first photos in the garage. Big thanks to Quigleys Auto Body for the paintwork!

10/31/06 - Viper: The Orange. I know it's wild but... it is a Viper.

11/29/06 - Viper: This is my fourth iteration on the Red/Orange/Charcoal combination. That's the nice thing about vinyl, it's easy to put on and take off. While I did like the stripe combo that you see posted previously, I couldn't live with it. It just seemed to be overkill, and the orange took away from the beautiful dark grey stripes. For a couple weeks, I lost the orange all together and lived with the grey stripes and grey wheels. No orange anywhere. Looks good, but it also looks... normal. :) So here's what I have this week. The orange stripes down the middle have been reduced to 1/4". It keeps the orange vibration, but doesn't detract from the grey stripes as much. No orange stripes on the sides of the car, and no orange stripe around the outer edge of the rim. It made the rims look small on the car. I still wanted a dash of orange on the side, so I put an orange "ViperGTS" logo on one spoke of each wheel. I don't like that it says "Viper" on each side of the car four times now, but that's the best excuse for orange I could come up with. We'll see what happens next month!

12/17/06 - Viper: I'm exhausted. huh huh huh... Jaime and I spent all day Saturday as well as Sunday morning installing a set of Edelbrock headers on the Viper. While I had previously installed Random Technology's 3" exhaust system, I still had the stock exhaust manifolds. The stockers necked down to 2.5", so these new set of headers finally open up the rest of the exhaust system. It's very cool to see a set of headers with five tubes each, and the two pieced design is really interesting as well. Made for a straight forward install. Nothing too tricky, just a lot of work. Had to dremel off a cross threaded bolt in the stock manifold and needed to extend the driver's side O2 sensor, but the rest of the job went smoothly. Jaime helped all day long (she's the one under the Viper in the pic below, putting a wire loom on the new O2 sensor wiring), so I owe her a day on the Monster Miata. Haven't driven it yet, but plan on taking it to work tomorrow.

Also, take note of our fancy schmancy new car ramps from Brute Industries. The incline is at a small enough angle that our low cars can drive up them, and they are coated with some kind of rubberized material so they absolutely will not scoot on the floor. They're incredibly light and get the car high enough off the ground that you can work under it.

12/30/06 - Viper and car show: Put on this cool carbon fiber Viper emblem in place of the stock one. Pretty cool custom touch! Washed the Viper last night in preparation for the C&C car show which happens weekly a few miles from our house (see our collection of pictures here). Also temped our neighbor Rick to tag along with his studly Pro-Street Pinto. What a cool car!!! Dad is visiting for the holidays so he drove the Pantera, and Jaime finally has a real license plate for the monster miata. We all caravanned down, enjoyed the show and enjoyed coffee, tea and pastries afterwords. Great morning!

1/1/07 - Happy New Year! I didn't have any current photos of the Viper, so I went to the park tonight and snapped a few. Purdy!

1/5/07 - Viper: Having installed headers on the car, I felt like it was time to pay a visit to Steve at Powertrain Dynamics for a couple dyno runs. The results are pretty dang impressive for an otherwise stock Viper. 440 horsepower and 484 ft-lbs. of torque at the wheels! Not too shabby!

A day before the dyno run I actually had one of the front O2 sensors fail and trip the check engine light. I picked up a pair of new sensors, replaced them, cleared the code and the Viper ran perfectly. I wrapped the new sensors in some heat shielding in case the headers were getting them too hot. Hopefully they'll last another 30,000 miles.

2/25/07 - Viper: Haven't done a whole lot lately. Basic maintanance on all of the cars but nothing special. The Viper is currently waiting for a new set of tires. This weekend I decided it was time to address the gas cap. On the GTS's, they come from the factory painted with clear coat. It makes them easy to clean but these days, the clear is starting to peel off, leaving ugly white patches. The aftermarket alternatives don't appeal to me. I'm not a big fan of chrome and the last thing my Viper needs is another Viper emblem.

So I took it upon myself to rework the original cap. I dissassembled it and hand sanded off the clearcoat. I polished the cap to a smooth shine and then decided that I liked the raw, brushed look better, so I took the time to brush the metal in specific directions. Looks nice, I'm totally happy with it and think it looks even better than it did new.

4/28/07 - Viper: Finally got my Viper back from DC Performance. The rear main seal was leaking quite badly and I didn't really feel like tackling that myself. While things were opened up, I had DC go through the car and take care of any current issues as well as install a new lightened flywheel. The total list of items: Rear Main Seal, Oil Pan Gasket, Oil and Filter, Clutch Kit, Clutch Slave, Chromoly Flywheel, Flush Clutch Fluid, Power Steering Flush, Wiper Blades, A/C Hose, Freon, Differential Service and Serpintine Belt. You don't wanna see the bill. :O

Also got around to taking some decent photos of the Viper's interior. I added one of Auger Resource's Hard Bar Shift Knobs, Shift Boot and E-brake Boot. You can also see in the pics Roe Racing's fire extinguisher and Raptor's programmable shift light. I picked up a carbon fiber cowl cover from a guy off ebay. It's awefully well done and doesn't weight a thing. :) Oh, and if you understand my Parking Permit, you're almost as much of a nerd as I am (Wikipedia Link for those less fortunate). :)

C&C Car Show: Got up early again! This time we motored down to the car show on the Griso. Highlight of the show was Chip Foose and his Hemisfear coupes! I know these were at Sema and whatnot, but to see Chip and his cars as a random, free Saturday morning car show is awesome. Sometimes it's good to live in SoCal.

4/29/07 - Viper: The Viper Club of America's SoCal chapter organized a breakfast run. Vipers from LA, Orange County and San Diego met up in Huntington Beach for breakfast. Then they cruised down PCH, and inland to a winery to do some wine tasting. Jaime and I joined up for the morning, gawked at the huge parking lot full of vipers (over 40 showed up), and then opted to head out instead of partaking in the $21 per person breakfast buffet. Can you blame us? :)

02/07 - Viper: Picked up a set of used 3-piece Viper Competition Coupe BBS racing wheels. They're in great shape. Gonna try to take some photos and do some photoshop mock-ups to see if/how they'll work with my car.

5/6/06/07 - Viper: Had a guy on ebay make a couple orange vinyl viper emblems for me. You can get the metal emblems in any color, but the lines are always chrome and they don't ever have a nice finish. I like this a lot better. Plus it saves weight right? It's a go fast part!

01/13/08 - Viper: I bought an extra set of Valve covers off of ebay and sent them to be powdercoated orange. I think I'll probably do the intake as well soon. And since I was planning on swapping valve covers, I might as well do some work under there, no? I installed a set of Harland Sharp roller rockers with new pushrods.

06/15/08 - Viper: It's finished! The supercharger is installed and the car is running. Drove it around town a bit today just to give it a bit of a test run. Found (and hopefully fixed) a couple small oil leaks. I'm trying not to drive it hard until I can get it on a dyno to verify the A/F ratios are all in order but I have run it up to 5lbs. of boost at about 4k rpm. Feels great. Can't wait to really open it up!

06/18/08 - Viper: Fixed one last leak, water leak this time, and set off to the dyno at Powertrain Dynamics today. Steve has helped me with my cars since the beginning. Six years ago (this month) he put the first tune on my supercharged cobra. Today the Viper didn't need any tuning work. Everything seems to be running great, and with the dyno registering 90 degrees in the garage and the everything still hot from the drive over, the Viper managed to put nearly 600 horsepower to the wheels. Pretty impressive for only seven pounds of boost. That puts this car at a power to weight ratio of about 5 lbs/hp, even when factoring in an extra 100lbs. for the supercharger kit.

There are a few things to work on though. As you can see from the pics taken over the weekend, the air filter is sitting in the engine compartment, bringing in hot air. This is probably hurting the horsepower numbers a bit. The second issue is the water cooler. It's not big/efficient enough. Anything under highway speeds causes the air intake temps to creep up and timing to be pulled, again resulting in HP loss. There was a 30 hp loss between runs on the dyno! More weekend projects!

06/26/08 - Viper: I built a cold air box and got it bolted on this morning. I made it out of cardboard first to create a pattern. Then I cut it out of aluminum. The center is one piece, bent smoothly around from front to back with a hole for the supercharger intake elbow to pass through and enough room in the back for air to pass all around the air filter. The side pieces were cut with extra tabs to be riveted to the center piece. The inside was painted flat black and the outside was covered with 400 degree heat sheilding. Wetherstripping seals the box to the hood. Should be much better.