[njsteve]

Hey, Colin, as you were regaling us with the story of your cold weather drive it reminded me of some of the early Viper TSBs. There was one for the same problem: A supplier glitch at the factory resulted in oversized heater hose clamps. Dodge used the spring type ones and they were known to -you guessed it, blow off under high pressure.

In the early days I would go each week to my local dealer and peruse the technical service bulletins online, and there were tons of them. My dealer was great, whenever there was a warranty issue, they would supply me the parts and let me do the work in my own garage if I wanted to. Or have me just hold onto the parts in the event we needed to do the job later. They would also let me keep the old parts if the factory never called for their return -such as when there was a TSB on the the toupette (the factory soft top) and they let me keep three of the old ones, including the remnants of one that ejected at 80 mph. I also had several sets of the alloy side pipe covers after they issued a TSB on those. And as for parts availability, Dodge had a mandatory overnight system for any Viper replacement part. If you ordered it and it was anywhere in the parts pipeline, you had it within a day. Amazing.

Dodge was very attentive to their Viper Owners and yes I used that voucher to buy a 96 GTS coupe. Dodge had a list of all of the then current, state-by-state DMV registrations for each currently registered Viper. You had to still own the car to be eligible for a voucher. They sent a application letter to each of those names. You had to respond on a certain date to get the actual voucher. The way it worked was that the voucher was non-transferable and only useable by you. It was a very well thought out system: The car had to be ordered under your name. And if the car arrived and you did not purchase it (such as if the dealer was just paying you to be a straw purchaser for his allocation) the car would be retrieved by Dodge and reallocated to a person on the waiting list. It was essentially an allocation ticket: if the dealer didn't sell you the car at a reasonable price, you simply took your ticket and went to another dealer that would and that first dealer was SOL and lost the allocation. I think I paid $1000 over factory FACTORY INVOICE for Project Pit Viper (which was still $4000 under MSRP) and the reason I gave him the $1000 was he was required to purchase the special rack of tools from Dodge to be eligible to have one of their technicians certifed to be a Viper Tech. (And I knew I was going to be using most of the tools anyway) As for the GTS in '96 I think I paid $500 over invoice for that car with the voucher ticket (from the same little small town dealer in Florida).

Those Viper Invitationals were a hoot. My wife and I spent our first wedding anniversary at the first Viper Owners Invitational (you try telling your wife you're taking her to Detroit for your anniversary and see what she says!) -she actually loved it! and Dodge gave us (my wife) an award for attending.