chorps
Enthusiast
Until it is proven that a 8.0L or even a 7.5L V10 can't fit under the hood of a viper I won't believe anyone just because no one tried or put the REAL effort on doing it. It is possible and I will repeat myself several times. Many, many ways to do it and still have a very well balanced car.
Vipers are for me, that is why I have a 2010 ACR. Unfortunately, in the year of 2013, automatics and DCT are way faster than any standard transmission. I like faster cars so I would like them to offer the new viper with an optional 6-7spd auto or a DCT.
That's all.
"No one tried" is basically implying that the engineers are lazy or dumb. The SRT guys aren't exactly turnips...
I know you want the magical DOHC faery dust to make the Viper 'competitive' when it is at or near the top of the class already, but you could do a *wee* bit of research on your own instead of coming here and continuing to press your armchair engineering.
Q: Did you consider overhead cams?
A: Goodness, no. This is a highly developed wedge, and we’re getting about 76 hp per liter. Going to overhead cams makes it wider, and this car is already narrow between the frame rails. We looked at putting Hemi heads on the Viper, but you can’t do it because of the width.
Who said this?
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Dick Winkles (chief engineer, Viper Powertrain)
Can we move past the whole DOHC thing now? It's not going to happen for a long time, if ever, simply because the OHV is very competitive with OHC designs. The fastest cars are big displacement OHV cars (excepting the price unlimited vehicles).
As for your automatic and DCT request, it wasn't in the cards for the Gen V launch.
Ralph Gilles: There will be a time in the future when I’d like to have an automatic. But the cost of developing it right now would have equaled the cost of the whole program.
Moving on...
It is obvious that all the engineers want the Gen V owners to do is maybe add headers and that's about it. Just drive it and enjoy it.
Winkles also said this in the same article:
The cast pistons weren’t quite robust enough if an owner added a supercharger or a turbo or if he was pumping nitrous. Those pistons weren’t indestructible. So we heard the owners’ cries, and we’re back to forged Mahles. Now we can protect the tuners from their own mistakes. We’ve also got a lower-tension ring pack with lower friction.
Looks like some people in SRT want to help the tuners...now if only they could lose an unlocked Venom controller at a local bar like that lost iPhone prototype....
Everything is excerpted from
http://www.caranddriver.com/features/2013-srt-viper-gts-in-depth-with-the-men-who-made-it-happen-feature
in May 2012.
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