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The Chronicles of SneakySnakes | Vol III

102K views 641 replies 132 participants last post by  lamsv 
#1 ·
Well, after a long time dreamin, finally stepped up into a Gen V. The gen 4 went to a good home, a member on the Viper boards, and I'm super excited for him--was really strange to see "my" car parked in front of a different residence. It's kind of weird when you sell to someone whom still has access to you, as you never really feel like the car is gone! Hope he enjoys it in good health on the mean streets of San Diego.

My search for a G5 was initially narrowed to Stryker cars only. Green, Purple, Orange, Red, in that order. I am not a stripe guy, and do not like flat colors; So 90% of the used market, and TAs, were out. Stryker cars rarely pop up for sale and when they do, people tend to want the moon for them. The one stryker green car I had my eye on in Colorado--which had sat on the market for almost a year--sold a few days before my gen 4 moved, and was particularly disappointing. I honestly never even considered a GTS Blue car (even though it is my favorite color), as they literally only made a handful without stripes (less than 10). It just never occurred to me that one would ever pop up. But pop up it did. 1 owner car, 6k miles, had a clear bra on from mile 1, passed R28, and has had R29 performed. Perfect. Additionally, (and this rarely happens) but the previous owner and I shared similar taste; All of his mods were not only appreciated but would of followed the same suit in my possession. It was good to save some money on parts, for once. Previous owner also included all of the oem parts in the sale.

Excited would be an understatement, I'm on pins and needles waiting on the car to be transported from PA to TX. She should be here this week, and I already have parts at the house to round out the bolt ons!

'13 Viper GTS Blue

-Track Package
--2pc Stoptech rotors
--295/30/18, 355/30/19 Pirelli PZero Corsa
--Sidewinder II Matte Black 18/19s
-Laguna Interior
--Full Laguna Leather Interior (door cards, dash, center console, steering wheel, shifter, e-brake, etc)
--Alcantara Headliner and Pillars
-18 Speaker Harmon Kardon Audio
--5.4 Channel Logic7
--4 subwoofers
-Advanced Aero
--Front & Rear Full Carbon spoilers

Aftermarket Mods:

-Arrow ECU
-Belanger Longtubes, Mid-pipes, HF Cats
-Corsa Catback
-AP Full Carbon Diffuser
-Xpel Clearbra [Full front end]
-GTS Blue Coil Covers
-Matte Black 'GTS' Emblem
-Matte Black Gas Door
-3M Tint

All I have for now are some potato cam cell phone snaps, real pictures to follow when I take delivery. Per usual I will use this thread to track my ownership, build progress, services, events, etc;



















Interior shots;



 
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#81 ·
Yup, that's great.
 
#86 ·
Anytime, PM me.

:laugh:

We may hate him, but we're still talking about him.

Seriously, that sounds great inside the car.

Chris
She screams up top!!


...yes that's what she said
 
#89 ·
The blue sneaky got her first bath this weekend, and what a pain it was. I can't stand having to hand dry vehicles as it is a recipe for scratches and swirl marks. It desperately needs a sealant so that I can air-dry the car the way I'm used to. That will be tackled along with a correction on the panels that have not been wrapped with a clear-bra asap. She still cleans up good though :)



Headed off to meet up with a few peeps from the Houston VOA for a mini road rally;






Didn't make it too far before the colored lights came on. Never saw the guy, and I'm trained to be very attentive, I was surprised. Alas, I pulled over and expected a speeding ticket (we were in BFE on an open road without a speed limit sign in sight, had no idea what the limit was). The guy comes up and verbatim; "Sir I pulled you over for 2 reasons, number one, this is my favorite car, and number two, lucky for me, you were speeding." Was a super nice guy, just gave us a warning and sent us on our way. He also literally thanked me for speeding so he had the opportunity to pull me over and take a pic of the car :laugh:






We found this motel to be cooler than a marble slab;


 
#90 ·
Didn't make it too far before the colored lights came on. Never saw the guy, and I'm trained to be very attentive, I was surprised. Alas, I pulled over and expected a speeding ticket (we were in BFE on an open road without a speed limit sign in sight, had no idea what the limit was). The guy comes up and verbatim; "Sir I pulled you over for 2 reasons, number one, this is my favorite car, and number two, lucky for me, you were speeding." Was a super nice guy, just gave us a warning and sent us on our way. He also literally thanked me for speeding so he had the opportunity to pull me over and take a pic of the car :laugh:
Your luck is better than mine. Got a 15 over ticket this weekend for going 75mph on 610...was dumbfounded. Was cruising at the speed of traffic.

Car is beautiful, love the blue.
 
#94 ·
5 seconds in and I count at least 8 people standing there when that car starts to get out of shape. Can't fault people for standing on a sidewalk but that driver is damn lucky he only hit some bushes and a curb. No fents
 
#101 ·
Got some more goodies for the blue snake. Going to take the day off tomorrow, do an oil change and slap on the final bolt-ons.

RSI Smooth tubes
Custom spacers [.450" front, .375" rear]
Viper Exchange Lowering Caps
DSE Catch can
DSE Heat shield





Started off with wrapping the DSE heat shield with Dynaliner. Since I'm not too good with this arts-and-crafts stuff I recruited someone with greater patience and aptitude. :) Look at that determination.









Got a great deal on some lowering caps off of a friend's TA, but they were looking quite tired. Half an hour's worth of wrist-destroying polishing with steel wool, and they got their groove back.



 
#104 ·
The shield itself is ceramic coated externally to try to reject/slow-down the rate of heat transfer into it. Regardless, given enough time it will itself become thermally soaked and start to radiate. The liner is just thermal insulation to try to reduce the shield radiating into the airbox above.
 
#108 ·
Oh and one more little nugget, a Calvo Motorsports fuse-box heat shield. The factory manifolds have a heat shield on them but the Belanger longtubes don't. Given their proximity to one another, people have melted the fuse box panel, hence the need for shielding. Plus, being Russian, any excuse to add gold anywhere is a welcome one.

 
#109 ·
Oh and one more little nugget, a Calvo Motorsports fuse-box heat shield. The factory manifolds have a heat shield on them but the Belanger longtubes don't. Given their proximity to one another, people have melted the fuse box panel, hence the need for shielding. Plus, being Russian, any excuse to add gold anywhere is a welcome one.
The shiny/gold side gets mounted facing the heat generator, right? In an effort to reflect it?
 
#112 ·
Took the day off today to work on the car. Literally nothing better than a day of good weather and motoring in my book. Woke up 2hrs earlier than I usually get up, with no alarm, go figure. Most days you cant pry me out of bed with a crowbar.

The heavens smile upon thee. No its not my house, yes its beautiful. Lets move on.



Waiting for her to cool off, and unpacking the goodies;





Tried to avoid hitting this nice Volkswagen while getting on the lift;



Started with the DSE heat shield and the RSI smooth tubes. Airbox removed;



Removing the crinkly oem units. Some say the smooth tubes are worth a few hp and improved throttle response, I just think they look better ;)



Heat shield in, fits like a glove. Also added one more layer of Dynaliner on the bottom for ****'s n gigs since we had material left over. PS. front end engine bay access with the clam-shell hood would makes my back hate life.



All buttoned up;





Did the Calvo Motorsport fusebox heat shield next. Fit well and looks great.




I like how the gold hue reflects off the longtube primaries :)



Tackled the oil change next. 11 qts worth of mother earth's finest.



World's longest oil pan;



While the oil drained we took a second to remove the oem air deflector spats in front of the front wheels. These are not equipped on cars with TA 1.0 aero splitters and since my car is a 2013 and TA aero didn't exist until the following year, my spats are still there. Whats interesting was apparently some cars with TA 1.0 aero spec'd from the factory had both the splitters and spats by accident. Slipped through the assembly line somehow. Long story short the only purpose they serve now is letting me know when I've reached my speed bump height limit, so off they go.






I tried to snap a pic of the carbon diffuser for you guys but it came out like crap. Super reflective.



DSE catch can was up next. Went with sealed unit this go around so I don't contaminate the oil with moisture over time. As straightforward as the install is, it was a pain in the ass. Started off by managing to wrestle the stock valve cover trim off without having to remove the X brace, score.




And this is why I said this was a pain in the ass. Removing the stock elbow off the oem pcv valve wasn't too bad (even though its teethed to inhibit hose removal). Carefully working around with a flat head while pulling did it. Getting the supplied inlet hose over the stock pcv valve nipple though, made me want to kill myself. Ended up trying to boil the end of the hose in an effort to get some expansion out of it.




Didn't work. Ended up dremeling the ID to open it up to a point that we could get the stubborn bastard over the valve. It sucks. Access in that area doesn't seem too bad but there is no way to get your hands in a position to get leverage on the hose. We wrestled forever with it.



Finally got it buttoned up. I will say all bs aside, I love Doug's products. Everything is just so well engineered and of oem appearance. Most people don't even notice anything is aftermarket when the hood is popped. OEM+



Because Racecar.



Next we drove down to the local discount to get all 4 wheels re-balanced. I had no vibrations that I could feel but I always check my cars to make sure everything is 0.00. I'm glad I did, every single wheel was out by 0.75 to 1.25 oz. Just because you can't feel it, doesn't mean the wheel bearings and bushings don't. Get it checked. While the assemblies were off I installed the custom Motorsport Technologies spacers I had machined. Everything is hub-centric as it should be.

Look at this tiny tire;




Mocking up the spacers. 0.450" up front, 0.375" rear. Everything was cleaned and hub surface and wheel pad were hit with a wire wheel to ensure proper seating.




Oem nuts vs ET nuts. Buying back some of that lost thread engagement.



Spacers installed.




She's dirty as hell but looks great on the new spacer setup. Its subtle but really makes the difference for me. Especially the fronts, the factory offsets are super mild up front on the gen 5s. I know its functional (for aero), but it just looks weak from the factory.




Also gave the beast a long overdue bath, but the sun came down so no clean pics till later :)
 
#114 ·
Don't know what to say, its clear as day to me? It's not a very aggressive setup this time around so maybe to others its not as striking. Didn't want to go wider than a .450" with a slip-on as I can only buy so much thread engagement back with ET nuts and I didn't want the additional rotating mass from bolt-on variants.

I think it looks great. When I get the lowering caps on it should be pure :heart::heart:



 
#117 ·
The spacers made a huge difference on the front from what it looks like. I'm curious, can you tell if adding the spacers makes any sort of handling improvement? Also, I know with that much power you won't notice it much but did you feel a difference on the butt dyno with the straight intakes?

Last thing, how close is the upper rad hose from rubbing on the new heat shield? Looks close on the pics.

Love the car.
 
#120 ·
Its just the angle in the pic maybe? Its a solid inch at least.

Regarding the catch can I have a polling question of sorts as I'm attempting to understand the how/why as I imagine the answers to those questions are dependent on the application.

The sentiment I've seen relating to naturally aspirated LS series engines is that yes, it will undoubtedly "catch" things, but the things you're catching aren't really doing anything to harm the engine or its performance. Basically you're just spending time & money to have another container to empty during oil changes, as well as an additional point of failure if you don't keep up on it (not that this applicable for you or me, but I think is still is worth mentioning.)*

I know the viper is leaps and bounds ahead of the LS in the realm of performance, but being it is still NA when all is said and done, is the catch can really necessary with proven benefits or is it just the "it's catching stuff, so it must be doing something" mentality that I have largely seen with the LS crowd?*

*Caveat being, these assumptions aren't considering track focused driving and/or FI applications. In those cases the catch can has proven data that warrants its use. I'm speaking with respect to daily driven or for pleasure cruiser NA vehicles that only moonlight as a racekor.
If you drive your car down the boulevard and back, you can stop reading here. The catch can is absolutely necessary in performance applications.

All cars have blow-by around the rings, all cars will have oil vapors under pressure in the crankcase, and all cars have PCV systems to relieve said pressure (usually through a check-valve back into the intake manifold). No oem's will allow you to vent said unsavory gasses into the atmosphere nor rely on people to actually drain and dispose of this condensed oil/water mixture after its collected in a "catch-can". Thus, all this oil gets fed right back into your combustion chamber to be burned off. The problem with this is that in forced induction applications or NA engines that have good amounts of blow-by, you're going to get a serious amount of oil into the intake tract. Why is this bad? Oil has a lower octane value than fuel (ie. it is more readily combustible), thus, big amounts in the AF mixture will spoil the overall resistance to pre-ignition (knock). The vipers have a very sensitive knock control system to keep things overly conservative under consistent high rpm track abuse. Last thing I want is to have my ignition timing getting backed out because my AF mixture has tons of oil in it and I'm getting detonation. There are other reasons as well, but for me, it is to keep power delivery consistent.
 
#119 ·
Regarding the catch can I have a polling question of sorts as I'm attempting to understand the how/why as I imagine the answers to those questions are dependent on the application.

The sentiment I've seen relating to naturally aspirated LS series engines is that yes, it will undoubtedly "catch" things, but the things you're catching aren't really doing anything to harm the engine or its performance. Basically you're just spending time & money to have another container to empty during oil changes, as well as an additional point of failure if you don't keep up on it (not that this applicable for you or me, but I think is still is worth mentioning.)*

I know the viper is leaps and bounds ahead of the LS in the realm of performance, but being it is still NA when all is said and done, is the catch can really necessary with proven benefits or is it just the "it's catching stuff, so it must be doing something" mentality that I have largely seen with the LS crowd?*

*Caveat being, these assumptions aren't considering track focused driving and/or FI applications. In those cases the catch can has proven data that warrants its use. I'm speaking with respect to daily driven or for pleasure cruiser NA vehicles that only moonlight as a racekor.
 
#121 ·
Viper Nationals, a small event of an even smaller community started off a year back. 90%+ of Viper owners track their cars on the road course, yet very few are into drag racing. Thought you guys would would like to see some of the highlights from this past Sunday. I tried to splice together the footage I had best I could. Nth, VE, Calvo, Prospeed, and Dynosaur are all in the mix. Enjoy :cool:



Winner's Circle
Naturally Aspirated Gen 5
1st Viper Andy Wheeler 9.71@139 (set world record)
2nd Viper Elie Bejjani 10.06@141
5th Gen Unlimited
1st Viper Jake Thomas 8.25@180 (set world record)
2nd Viper Evan Davis and Drag965 9.35@157
Unlimited
1st Firebird Jason Grace 7.90@170
2nd Viper Ross Baird 7.82@183
 
#127 ·
Viper Nationals, a small event of an even smaller community started off a year back. 90%+ of Viper owners track their cars on the road course, yet very few are into drag racing. Thought you guys would would like to see some of the highlights from this past Sunday. I tried to splice together the footage I had best I could. Nth, VE, Calvo, Prospeed, and Dynosaur are all in the mix. Enjoy :cool:

To add to this here are some photos from the event. I was in Viper heaven all day. So many different setups, new and old friends alike, 'twas a great day:thumbup:

Will's TT Nthmoto built ACR-E. Stock motor and trans, 1200whp on pump, just all around nasty.



Andy and I posted up on the block like a mailbox.



Viper Exchanges mule, heads/cam 9.0L stroker and a 4L80E. Andy doing some last minute weight reduction :laugh:



Shakedown passes yielded consistent 9.70-9.80s, the rev limiter was bumped up to 6600 as they dialed the car in over the course of the day and the traps went up to 141 in even poorer DA.



Rich people.



Tim's new paint to sample GTC coupe. What a beautiful example. Note the ACR wheels and carbon brakes, tractive DSC suspension and full carbon interior/exterior packages as well. Gorgeous.




Some TT lambros




Tony's TA and another heads/cam coupe



Joe's heads/cam gen 2, sounded unreal. Calvo built (620whp)



A few TT snakes in Calvo's corner



Ellie's beautiful comp blue coupe. HHP built, Greg Good's heads/cam setup, some meth, and a compression bump. Made 750whp/655wtq. Car was full weight and running dead consistent 10.0s @ 141. Tall first gear and a 28" tire was keeping him out of the 9s.



Will wearing my favorite t-shirt. Gets the vette guys panties in a wad like clockwork.



Lucas in his showroom stock Plum Crazy GTC coupe. Beauty.



Calvo Motorsports red coupe ready to take on Will's TT ACR-E monstrosity. Red coupe had a headgames ported heads/cam package, PPG sequential trans, and some light weight reduction. Stock clutch was keeping this car out of the 9s as well. Ran a best of 10.1@143mph



Ellie and Calvo cooling off after a pass



Cant forget about the sneaky one :)



The absolute greatest part of the weekend was being able to hang out with Dick Winkles who drove the VE mule car down from Detroit for the event. Picking the man's brain who designed and tuned the viper's powertrain and was involved in the project since 1989 was almost unreal. He also added a solid 50hp to my car.



Jake's Nth moto built TA 2.0. Built motor, TT, th400 trans, (1500hp+). Car was in the solid 8s all day finishing off by setting the gen 5 record at 8.25@180mph.



Ross's nasty high 7 second Gen 2 vs Jakes TA2






The winner's circle

 
#128 ·
We all have our good days and our bad days, cars are no different. Sneaky One had a bad day the late afternoon of Viper Nationals. Went to start the car to head home after the event (was all pumped up and ready to tear it up on the way home), she fires up and I swear I hear a faint knock. Oil pressure looks good, idling fine, am I just hearing things? I give it a few seconds to settle in and I can now make out a distinct metallic knocking sound. Well. F*ck. Oil pressure still steady as a rock as I climb out of the car. "Its a good thing I'm still under warranty" I mutter as I pop the hood. Hoods open, and something's most definitely clankin away. It was coming from the top end of the drivers valve cover so no main or rod bearing, whew! I shut the car down and go to hunt out Dick Winkles and Morgan who are still hanging out in the pits. Nothing like having the powertrain engineer who designed the motor and the most experienced viper tech in the world available within arm's reach. Lucky me. We all huddle around the car for a few minutes, ear to the motor like we're diagnosing a heart murmur. The consensus? I have a failed lifter. Shift happens as they say.

Car went to Viper Exchange the following day for the tear down. VE always took care of me and I cant say enough good things about Morgan; his work ethic, attention to detail, and overall knowledge are second to none. As far as I'm concerned, if you're getting work done on these cars, he's unrivaled. Only guy that I trust to take care of my car, like I take care of my car.





Oil pan is off, bores are inspected, oil is drained, and both it and the filter are looked over for debris. Nothing is found.




Look at that swinging pick up!



And that cross hatching on the throws, pure porn! :)



Morgan pulled the baffles off of the oil pan to clean up some of the rough casting, and I know this is pretty much the story with all automotive castings but damn, after looking over the oil pan, I can see how they've had so much debris in the blocks. These as-cast products have areas that are rough. At least with the pans you can extract most of the debris through shakers/washers and follow with a visual inspection. In the block, with the water jackets and crevices that are out of line-of-sight, good luck.






Morgan got the ol girl naked down to the shortblock;




Drivers side



Passenger side






And here is the location of our culprit noisemaker;



You can see one of the rollers is actually damaged from bouncing around on the cam lobe.



One of the lifters got debris either in the main body oil passage or the check valve and was not pumping up and/or holding oil pressure. When that happens, you lose line-to-line contact with the pushrod/cam and you get that familiar clickity racket.

If you need some refresher on hydraulic lifters I found these to be particular helpful. The chrysler video especially, why they don't make handy instructional videos like that anymore I'll never know!

On top of losing contact with the rest of the valvetrain, with a bad lifter you stop the pushrod from loading the rocker arm squarely and can give it some nasty side loads. I think this was the reason for damage on the rocker which sat atop the failed lifter. The additional vibration may have caused the trunnion to move laterally inside the rocker (or the rocker to move laterally on the trunnion). Either way, it was trying to push out that stamped cap which keeps the bearings in place, and ended up chipping it. If that cap had come off all the way and released all those needle bearings into the oiling system, I would have had a worse day.




The lifters were replaced, along with the rocker, and the heads inspected. Everything looked ship shape with no other visible damage, so the re-assembly process began.





This was also a good opportunity to replace those crappy Belanger paper gaskets with some oem steel crush ones. Don't know why the PO had those installed.



She should be back better than new soon. At least I had an opportunity to poke around inside the motor and check things over on someone else's dime. Could of been worse!
 
#130 ·
VE is a financial part of, yet a separate entity, from Tomball Dodge. As the name implies they are responsible for the Viper end of the business (new and used), and also do performance parts (heads/cam/etc) installs, service, and warranty work.
 
#135 ·
Stopped by to check on the sneaky beast. Motor is back in completely assembled, car was test driven, and all is well. No more valvetrain noise.





While the car was at VE I figured they could address a few more things, one of which being another warranty repair. I had noticed that there was an audible whine from the rear between 68-80mph. I figured it was worth tearing into to check the bearings, so out it went;




Taking a look on the bench it was obvious the PO had never changed the diff fluid in his ownership. Being as he is the owner of a Dodge dealership, with easier access to service than pretty much anyone, this was quite surprising. The fluid was cooked, milky, and full of shavings. Good thing we took a peek. There isn't a lot of fluid in there so it cooks quickly, plus you're going to have metal shavings over time from ring/pinion contact. I think its recommended to be changed every other track day or so? Even without tracking, I'd change it at least once a year, its just cheap insurance.







Fluid was vacuumed out, pinion bearings were changed, everything cleaned up, and she was refilled and re-installed.



Took some time to admire that full carbon diffuser :heart:




Took the time to grease the upper/lower balljoints while we were in there as well. Morgan taught me how to check their fluid level by looking at the boots, apparently they should look slightly puffy if they're full.




Next it was time to eliminate that 4x4 wheel gap by throwing on the lowering caps;



Steamrollers removed...



Front/Rear coilovers removed;






Here you can see how the lowering caps actually accomplish the feat, purely by virtue of a thinner upper perch. Lowering 0.6" up front, 0.5" in the rear. Spring pre-load changes ever so slightly but I doubt it will do anything noticeable to ride quality.



Last but not least I removed the sidemarkers front and rear and had them color matched GTS Blue. I don't like how they break up the profile of the car so this will be a welcome change.





Picked them up from my friends at CMS collision today, they turned out great;

 
#138 ·
:thumbup::thumbup::beer:

The backsides of your calipers are dirty. What are you, an animal?

This car, coupled with my neighbor's Gen 3, makes me want a Viper so, so badly. It doesn't help that his new ACR is going to be here any day now...
Haha it makes me sick to post those pics, she's going for a full wheels-off detail (color correction, sealant, etc) as soon as she gets back. You'll be able to eat off the calipers :laugh:
 
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