Buying a Gen 3 that needs these things - Advice

Stray Cat

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Car will be for leisure, street-able, no racing/track time.

Both Front Struts - Should I go with the Alden after Market Struts ? https://aldanamerican.com/product/c...-rear-750-lbs-in-0-0-5-in-lowered-sku-g2sbr2/

Oil Cooler Lines - Should I go with these Aftermarket instead of Chrysler stock ? ? https://www.viperpartsusa.com/product/oil-cooler-line-kit-srt-03-17/

Belanger or Borla Street Exhaust ? 2.5"

K&N Cold Air Intake still available and worth it ? https://www.theviperstore.com/Viper3_Products_Performance_Air_Intake.htm

Only Tires available now are NITTO INVO's. No Michelin or Continental. No Rear tires at all. Thoughts ?

Radio is intermittent - any ideas on a refurbish, or what is a good after market unit to consider ?

Thank you,

John
 

TexasViper35

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Car will be for leisure, street-able, no racing/track time.

Both Front Struts - Should I go with the Alden after Market Struts ? https://aldanamerican.com/product/c...-rear-750-lbs-in-0-0-5-in-lowered-sku-g2sbr2/

Oil Cooler Lines - Should I go with these Aftermarket instead of Chrysler stock ? ? https://www.viperpartsusa.com/product/oil-cooler-line-kit-srt-03-17/

Belanger or Borla Street Exhaust ? 2.5"

K&N Cold Air Intake still available and worth it ? https://www.theviperstore.com/Viper3_Products_Performance_Air_Intake.htm

Only Tires available now are NITTO INVO's. No Michelin or Continental. No Rear tires at all. Thoughts ?

Radio is intermittent - any ideas on a refurbish, or what is a good after market unit to consider ?

Thank you,

John
I have the RSI oil lines on my car. $200 less than that Viper specialty site. You might as well order the power steering line kit too if yours are original.


I have the Borla cat back, very good product.

I would go with MOPAR shocks, they cost a bit more but they are OEM MOPAR for Viper, worth it IMO. The real trouble starts when OEM parts are NLA.

Is it the radio Volume **** giving you trouble? If that’s the fault I sprayed mine with DeOxit D100 and turned the **** back and forth a bit. It cleaned it up nicely and improved it, but I found that after a few more uses it’s perfect now, no hesitation in between any of the volume settings.

I‘ve got the K&N. Shop around, Advance Auto Parts has a 20% of sale right now for Labor Day.

I thought the Covid shutdown impact on Michelins was over by now? I guess if you absolutely need tires right now you’ve got to make a lot of calls to find them: Discount Tire, Tire Rack, CostCo, National Tire and Battery, your Dodge dealer, etc. If no luck ask your Dodge store to do a national search of Dodge dealer’s inventories for you.

Get Michelin Pilot Sports if you can, but not Sport Cups though. If I had to I suppose I would buy Nittos, but grudgingly.

Alternately you could go up a size on the width of your tires, as are on later Vipers. I think it’s 355 on the rear and 285 on the front. Pirelli makes them, $$$$!, maybe Continental too.
 
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MoparMap

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I pretty much agree with BYAIC on most of that.

The shocks are probably the most open question regarding what you are really looking for out of them. If you just want some drop you can do that a couple different ways and a bunch of different price tags. I think you can just get lowering caps and maybe even different springs for the stock ones, but it's a fixed drop compared to being adjustable. I'd also probably buy a full car set. You don't really want to mix those front and rear and the rake of the car is actually pretty important to how it handles, so changing just one end could mess with that.

Aftermarket oil lines are fair cheap insurance. It's not like the stock ones explode or anything like that, but might as well just put on something that has a better chance of not leaking over time. The power steering line as BYAIC said should probably be in that list as well. That seem to be one of the most common problems on the gen 3. JTVSP also makes those I believe.

I personally love my Borlas, though it comes down to what kind of sound you are looking for. To me the Borlas have a nice deep tone and rumble and sound more like a roar when laying on it. Other systems are more **** sounding to me and I would call more like a scream. They give a little more of that exotic high pitch engine note like you'd get with a Lambo or something where the Borla is a little more on the muscle car side of things.

Mine came with a K&N already installed, but if you aren't going to mod the car any I don't think I'd worry about changing it. The factory did a lot of testing and found no real benefit to the cloth style filters when they designed the engine. If you start needing more airflow due to mods like a different cam or head porting then it might make sense, but I wouldn't expect any performance difference on a stock car with one. To each his own though. I don't think they are a bad product by any means, but the more I've worked in an OEM type setting the more I understand why engineers make the choices they do. However, one thing to keep in mind is the factory filters have been known to be hard to come by, so a K&N could make sense because it might be easier to replace the filter elements down the road.

Luckily I haven't had to deal with this yet, but I've heard it has been hard to find them lately. I've driven a car with the Invos and it didn't seem all that different from my Pilot Supersports, but I also didn't drive it for that long. I can say the Supersports are great tires though and very good all arounders that can be used in pouring rain or the track just the same with really nice performance (at least while they still have some tread depth, lol). Like BYAIC said as well, you might see if there is anything out there in a size either way. Pirelli makes the gen 5 tires which are 355s, and I believe they are still the same rim size, so you might try looking up gen 5 tires as another option. Expensive, but what Viper tires aren't...

Never had a stock radio in mine, so hard to say. They are a goofy size (DIN 1.5), so most people just put in a filler plate and change to a single DIN size radio, in which case your options are basically limitless. The rounded corners of the stock radio make it even harder to find something that fully fits the space. The one trick might be interfacing with the stock amp though. I don't recall if it actually takes speaker level inputs or if the Viper radio is somewhat unique and has line level outputs for each channel. It is wired individually though if I remember correctly, but I think you can buy adapter harnesses that make that job pretty straightforward.
 

hlieber50

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I love my Belanger, keeps heat out of the cabin, & had Corsa pipes added last year.
 

hlieber50

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My performance guy is against K&N. It can allow oil to ***** up your mass air sensor
 

woodrow pamela

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we have 2005 gen 3 parts availabe - corsa exhaust system "missing drivers side" sidepipe damaged complete 900.00 many other parts - convertible red body and black interior , black canvas top complete good condition 805 794-1566 ventura ca
 

proedge

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If you’re gonna change out your shocks, go with a new set of coil overs. My car had the same issues, the front shocks were leaking. I ordered a set of BC racing coil overs and the car rides 10x better and I can set the ride height
 
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Stray Cat

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Thank you all, very much.

BYAIC - Yes, cant get the Pilots for the rear. Only the front. Cups are only available for rear - John at the Parts store says he can get tires. I will check. Will try the radio solution when I get the car. Thanks! I understand that the Alden Coil overs are good ? Again , John at the Viper parts store has them, all four coil over for decent price. Do the larger tires look good, fit properly on the 2005 ? Remember , the Copperhead has the Sidewinder wheels so do not know if that makes a difference. Does the Borla also reduce the heat ? Had Borla on my Prowler, loved them.

MoparMap - I would lean towards the Muscle car sound. Also, will do the Power Steering kit and the Oil Cooler as you all suggest too.

Hlieber - I had the same problem with a 1999 Firehawk and K&N messing up the MAS.

Woodrow - i will phone you. Should have the car within a month.

Proedge - Same - the coil overs are good, better than stock ? Stock Mopar shoacks are expensive as mentioned

Thank you all - I will probably do an exhaust and a set of 3:55 gears. I have heard that is a good gear for the 2005's. Also, a short throw shifter. That would be about it!

Thanks!

John
 

MoparMap

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My performance guy is against K&N. It can allow oil to ***** up your mass air sensor

For what it's worth, the Gen 3 at least doesn't run a mass air flow sensor, so less worry there. Generally speaking though I agree that you have to be careful with K&Ns. You almost never flow more air with the same surface area without somehow reducing filtration. A K&N might get around that by using a different means of filtration (oil and fabric instead of just paper), but that means you have to keep up with the upkeep of cleaning and reoiling them.
 

TexasViper35

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Thank you all, very much.

BYAIC - Yes, cant get the Pilots for the rear. Only the front. Cups are only available for rear - John at the Parts store says he can get tires. I will check. Will try the radio solution when I get the car. Thanks! I understand that the Alden Coil overs are good ? Again , John at the Viper parts store has them, all four coil over for decent price. Do the larger tires look good, fit properly on the 2005 ? Remember , the Copperhead has the Sidewinder wheels so do not know if that makes a difference. Does the Borla also reduce the heat ? Had Borla on my Prowler, loved them.

MoparMap - I would lean towards the Muscle car sound. Also, will do the Power Steering kit and the Oil Cooler as you all suggest too.

Hlieber - I had the same problem with a 1999 Firehawk and K&N messing up the MAS.

Woodrow - i will phone you. Should have the car within a month.

Proedge - Same - the coil overs are good, better than stock ? Stock Mopar shoacks are expensive as mentioned

Thank you all - I will probably do an exhaust and a set of 3:55 gears. I have heard that is a good gear for the 2005's. Also, a short throw shifter. That would be about it!

Thanks!

John
I have no experience with aftermarket shocks/struts so… But I did replace all of mine with a fresh set of OEM MOPAR, a later updated version, when mine were whipped at about 55K miles. They are designed by MOPAR and built by KONI IIRC. Adjustable ones were hugely popular on these cars for a long time and I’ve never read about any issues with them. As far as Aldens, they were offered to me by the guys that work on my car, but it was just because they cost less, not for any other reasons, so I can’t add any info about them. Probably very nice though, because if they were junk my mechanic wouldn’t have offered them.

The Borla cat back should be a required modification IMO, it drastically reduces interior heat by deleting the H-Pipe, and somehow the side sills stay cool too!

Michelin Pilot Sports are amazing on this car in any weather, and somehow last 15K miles! I always ran Pirell’s on my Porsche, 8-9K miles if I was lucky. Stay away from the Michelin Cup Series though, it is designed for dry track use and comes with minimal tread depth. I tried a set of 285 tires at the front. It’s 5mm wider on either side, so barely noticeable but noticeable if you really know your car. I really didn’t like how they looked in the wheel well so I switched back to OEM spec 275’s. I‘d have to see a later car with the wider setup all the way around to have a definite opinion, it may look great, IDK. And that set up did break track records on later Vipers. But you should be able to get Nittos, unless those are sold out too. If no OEM size option is available and your tires are shot then you’ve got to make the call, or just wait. Discount Tire can call Michelin and get information about when they are going to have tire(s) available to ship. I hope this Covid tire supply issue gets fixed soon!

I suspect that when Jon says “he has tires” he means only that, that he has “something that will work” but maybe not exactly what you might desire if you want the OEM sizes, for the moment anyway.

Never had a problem with my K&N and the MAF. That is something that happens when the filters are overly saturated with oil after cleaning on certain older cars. Or it might just be an internet rumor. To each his own. IIRC Dodge put a K&N filter as Standard on one of the recent high performance Challengers, can’t remember which one.
 
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Stray Cat

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Super helpful - Thank you. Have been told that with the 2005, a short throw Shifter, very nice change too!

John
 

MoparMap

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Another option that's even simpler than replacing the shifter is just getting a shorter handle. The stock one sits up pretty high but they make shorter versions or whole different style ones. I have a profiled one from somewhere I can't recall, but it gives a similar shorter throw. It's not truly a short throw shifter in the same sense as it doesn't change the pivot point for the linkage or anything. It's more like just grabbing the shifter lower down on the shaft.
 

Viper Specialty

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I have the RSI oil lines on my car. $200 less than that Viper specialty site.

Not sure if this was a reference to us or not... but you get what you pay for regardless. RSI's total line cost doesn't even reach the parts content cost of our standard lines, let alone quick connect versions.
 

woodrow pamela

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we have a corsa exhaust system form a 2005 convertible "missing drivers side pipe" damaged in wreak 805 794-one 1566 many other parts available
 
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