I have been through FOUR of these lousy hinges in three years & 30+K miles. Your door's alignment is critical for proper operation. Dodge designed the Viper door to swing on a single hinge, and a lousy one at that. Hope the new Gen III Vipers have a better design. Anyhow... Keep this hinge greased well all the time. Greasing is best accomplished by removing the small body trim panel just forward of your door, thus accessing the hinge and flat spring plate. I'm out of warranty now....but not grease, and intend to try and preserve this last hinge as long as possible.
Do not delay.If your Viper is still under warranty... request a full repair pronto. (JD)
This also happened to me at Mid Ohio. I felt the door getting harder and harder to open, finally I heard a large POP! Luckily it did not do any damge to the paint work. But we took the front panel off and actually sawed off the hing peice that was protruding as to create less damage to the door. Great tip on greaing the hinge, I will start to do this with my maintenance schedule. Good luck on getting the door fixed under warranty. I would think the dealership will take care of this. But who knows.
Steve,
Didn't you just get this car? I see your earlier post that your first Viper just arrived, what a way to start off ownership of the car, but believe me, this is just a minor thing, I hope you can still drive it during the wait for the parts to fix it. Get that baby back to the dealer and get it fixed under warranty right away. Enjoy the car, it is truly an amazing machine, really never heard of this hinge thing before now.
As mentioned...... this part must be lubricated. Mine broke off too. The purpose of this flat spring is to hold the door open. It is not necessary if you don't want to replace it..... just cut it off. Without it, the door will swing back on you after being opened. However, I was told that the door may come out of alignment if this part breaks, but I can't see how that can happen.
If your doors go out of alignment, be careful that the door edge does not strike the screw heads which protrude on the inside vertical portion of the door frame. If the door contacts these screw heads, they may knock a chip out of the door edge.
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