Jim Peffers
Viper Owner
I am posting this in hopes that it may save someone a lot of aggravation. I am 55 and have been working with all types of machinery most of my life and have seen all kinds of weird $hit. One of the strangest was one of my early muscle cars, a 1960 Corvette, that was overheating. It exhibited all the same symptoms that a Viper discussed on this board had. It would overheat at low engine speeds and would slowly return to normal at higher engine speeds.
I flushed the radiator, the block, replaced the thermostat and waterpump - checked eveything I could check; nothing helped. I was sitting in the shop one evening drinking a beer and thinking about the car and analyzing the problem part-by-part. It occurred to me that I had checked everthing except the hoses which looked and felt OK. So I emptied the radiator fluid and pulled off the hoses.
Radiator hoses have a laminated type of construction and on close examination, I found that the inner layer of one of the hoses had separated and was saging down into the interior of the hose and thereby impeding the flow at low engine speeds and causing the engine to overheat. At higher engine speeds, the water pump was powerful enough to force enough coolant past the blockage to allow the engine to cool down. I want to stress that on the outside, the hose looked and felt normal. Incidently, the hose was almost new - it was a manufacturing defect.
After reading all of the discussion on this board concerning a Viper overheating; it seems to me that the only logical answer is that there must be a blockage somewhere in the cooling system - everthing else has been checked. It could be the hoses, a bad gasket that has slipped out of position, a glob of gasket cement or even a casting defect somewhere in the engine.
I flushed the radiator, the block, replaced the thermostat and waterpump - checked eveything I could check; nothing helped. I was sitting in the shop one evening drinking a beer and thinking about the car and analyzing the problem part-by-part. It occurred to me that I had checked everthing except the hoses which looked and felt OK. So I emptied the radiator fluid and pulled off the hoses.
Radiator hoses have a laminated type of construction and on close examination, I found that the inner layer of one of the hoses had separated and was saging down into the interior of the hose and thereby impeding the flow at low engine speeds and causing the engine to overheat. At higher engine speeds, the water pump was powerful enough to force enough coolant past the blockage to allow the engine to cool down. I want to stress that on the outside, the hose looked and felt normal. Incidently, the hose was almost new - it was a manufacturing defect.
After reading all of the discussion on this board concerning a Viper overheating; it seems to me that the only logical answer is that there must be a blockage somewhere in the cooling system - everthing else has been checked. It could be the hoses, a bad gasket that has slipped out of position, a glob of gasket cement or even a casting defect somewhere in the engine.
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