Jump to content

Tere

Members
  • Posts

    255
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by Tere

  1. Just west of San Antonio we have what's called the "Texas Hill Country" that has some incredibly fun (and challenging) driving roads. Y'all can probably relate to very narrow roads with no shoulders -- add 6-8 very tight turns per mile and incredible elevation changes and you're on a hill country road. We have one 95-mile loop called the "Three Sisters" -- three twisty ranch roads. Folks come from all over to ride the Three Sisters. Google: texas three sisters
  2. Any time any of y'all happen to visit the provincials across the pond and are passing through San Antonio, just let me know and we'll take some cars out for a cruise!
  3. Thanks y'all. It is a totally unrefined beast with absolutely no road manners. It's so completely different to drive than the 350 -- aside from 4 wheels, the two cars have nothing in common.
  4. I don't think I've ever posted a photo of my oldest son's 350. 35th Anniversary '05 350Z -- they only made a couple hundred in Ultra Yellow.
  5. That and some new rubber on the back -- he's almost got the rear tires worn out doing power slides. The thing goes 5 mph in high gear so he comes downhill and throws the wheel to the stop flipping the back end around with the pedal still to the floor. Yesterday, he spotted a red SRT-10 on his way over to the house, and told his dad that that was his "snake car." Uh oh...
  6. It gets about the same as my '03 350Z when I'm putting the pedal to the metal. Freeway cruising is interesting -- in 6th gear at 70 mph it's practically at idle rpm. At 100 mph in 6th, she's only turning 1,800 rpm. So, sedate highway cruising isn't too bad in the fuel department. The Viper only has an 18 gallon tank, which you can suck dry pretty quickly with the pedal to the floor. Lol, and that 2003 of yours ain't no slouch. Is it. So is the ASP getting lots of road time at the moment Tere? LOL... I took old Black Cherry out for a spin yesterday. The FLYIN Z never disappoints -- she's very quick and nimble. I'm almost tempted to take the 350 on the next Viper hill country cruise to show the Viper folks a real "bad asp" in the twisties. I had to laugh yesterday. My oldest son was over with his 350 -- the Viper was totally surrounded by 350s (and the 300). LOL... 5 cars and only 10 seats. My oldest grandson also had his Viper at the house, so that evened the score a little....
  7. LOL... Yep, if you jab the throttle in any gear on the Viper with the front wheels slightly turned, it will turn around and bite you in the asp. Throttle technique has to be smooth to bring the torque on evenly to the wheels. The Quaife LSD improves even torque distribution to the wheels. Suspension tuning and proper alignment are also factors. Unlike a lot of cars, the Viper is one that takes 100% of your attention on the road. The second you don't pay attention, it will rear up and show its fangs. The 350 is incredibly stable at over 150, so much so that it's boring. The Viper is not as stable -- it will go over 200 mph, but at that speed, it's a big handful of car even for seasoned drivers. The reason the ACR has that big wing is the car needs incredible rear downforce -- the wing generates up to 1,200 pounds of downforce to give it stability. The coupe has a different aero design on the rear than the roadster, so the roadster is the least stable of the three Viper models at high speeds. Fourth gear in the Viper is 1:1 (the gear you use for your dyno numbers) -- 5th and 6th gears are "overdrives". If you're into shredding tires, one of the top drift drivers in the world has won championships driving Vipers -- they go sideways so well.
  8. The '03 350 is still my car of choice for the track -- it's far more precise in cornering (of course it's purposefully set up for the track). On the typical track, all the Viper's torque doesn't get you much since it's not quite as good in the corners. Even with some suspension tuning, I doubt that it will corner as good as the 350. We'll see what happens -- we might do the ACR suspension on it. The ACR T6060 tranny would also be a little improvement. Most of the Gen 4 Viper stuff bolts right up to a Gen 3 Viper.
  9. And for you speed junkies, here's a clip of an R8, GT3, and SRT-10 (vert) fooling around on the Autobahn... http://videos.streetfire.net/video/GT3R ... 207577.htm
  10. And in case you missed the Viper ACR doing 7:22 on the Ring last August, here it is. Notice how driver centric the car is -- it's about 3" from the steering wheel to the shifter (a very tight shift pattern too). You can buy the ACR for around $111K -- but be warned, you're buying a barely street legal race car. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Dodg ... 181435.htm
  11. Here's the V-10 -- it doesn't look as big as it really is in this photo. The intake "plumbing" is all of 8" long. The hood scoop is functional and gives a ram air effect at high speed (free boost!).
  12. Here's the view most folks get to see -- my asp... Check out the 345/30R19 rubber -- the back end is all freaking wall to wall tire. And the rear aero set-up -- diffuser and four aero strakes. The bottom is all aero panels. I love the center brake light!
  13. Ask and ye shall receive... The exhaust popping on decel is kind of the Viper exhaust "signature" -- all Vipers do it. http://videos.streetfire.net/video/Vipe ... 207879.htm
  14. Yep, it is a ridiculously crazy car. Now is the time to pick one up here in the States. No serious, halfway decent offer is refused. This one was barely broken in. They didn't make '07 model year Vipers, but ran the '06 model production for two years -- this one was made at the end of the '06 production run in '07, just before the '08 production started up. So, I got a practically new Viper for $38,000 under its original sticker. A steal deal, particularly since it's a rare 1 of only 6 made. The paint is interesting since it goes from black to dark blue-gray, to midnight blue, to silver-blue in different lighting. The pearl has three different colors in it.
  15. It gets about the same as my '03 350Z when I'm putting the pedal to the metal. Freeway cruising is interesting -- in 6th gear at 70 mph it's practically at idle rpm. At 100 mph in 6th, she's only turning 1,800 rpm. So, sedate highway cruising isn't too bad in the fuel department. The Viper only has an 18 gallon tank, which you can suck dry pretty quickly with the pedal to the floor.
  16. Most likely once I get the suspension to my liking, put in some StopTech AeroRotors, and drop in a set of Hawk DTC pads. A Quaife LSD might also help keep the backend at the backend. On the Viper, all that torque makes precise throttle control pretty essential. The Viper is not an easy car for a novice to drive -- it can get away from you in a heartbeat. I only had to wiggle it's tush a few times to figure it out. I was pretty happy with the way she took corners on a fast run through the Texas hill country twisties -- extreme curves and elevation changes on a very narrow two-lane road with no run-off space (road shoulders). My '03 350Z has more whp but less torque than the Viper. All that torque gives awesome acceleration coming out of a tight corner to a steep uphill grade -- you know you're accelerating, but you don't realize how fast until to take a quick peek at the speedo. There's an old saying, "Horsepower is for sales folks; whereas, torque is for drivers."
  17. LOL... The Viper is very much a driver's car. It's just you and the beast -- no fancy "fly by wire" electronics to get in your way. It runs the twisties pretty good -- even better when I get her all set up for taking corners fast (make that faster). LOL.. the Viper ACR ran The Ring in 7:22 in August of this year -- not too shabby for a big hunk of old school American muscle. The thing was routinely pulling over 1.8 lateral Gs on the Ring run. You don't strap into a Viper, you strap it on -- you don't sit in it, you wear it. To compare it to the 350Z (VDC/TCS off) driving experience... The Z is a surgeon's scalpel -- fine and precise. The Viper is a "Rambo" knife -- brutal and formidable
  18. Oh yeah, the whp is 435 at 5,400 rpm and above 400 from 4,500 rpm to redline. These are the bone stock numbers. I just took off 30-40 pounds of exhaust pipe; replaced with a 5' straight out cat-back on each side. The GT-R order started to get way too iffy for an '09 model even though I placed my order on 3/3/08. Plus Nissan wanted to up the dealer invoice price even though my order was placed before the 9/5/08 original MSRP deadline. The whole affair was turning into a huge headache and a big bucket of worms. All that plus the warranty/tranny issues were a big negative on the deal too. Do ya think the Viper's new cat-back is a little more efficient?
  19. After 8.5 months of the Nissan North America run around on my GT-R order, I finally pulled the plug on the deal in November. Here's what I picked up to join the three Z cars in the go-fast stable. This one is 1 of only 6 made in this color and configuration. The V-10 (8.3L) is outrageously huge -- 420 ft/lbs of torque at 1,800 rpm -- 474 ft/lbs of torque at 4,100 rpm; all at the wheels! What a torque monster!
  20. Fully race built motor capable of 25 psi with ease. Right now she's pushing 16 psi at 7,100 redline (no speed limiter). Probably just short of 600 at the crank, and above 480 at the wheels on a DynoJet on a good day. She looks kinda stock from the outside to the casual observer, but under her skin there's not much stock left. As soon as I go less than 11 pounds of vacuum, the BOV slams shut and it's instant boost. Definitely not something a stock 135i would want to knowingly take on. Unknowingly... Oops, my doors are gone...
  21. LOL... I had one trying to play with me on the way home from work this evening. Unfortunately for him I was driving the '03 350 -- he bit off a little more than he could chew. I think it is a nice looking car, and not bad in the quickness department when I held back and let him get a little head start before I kicked the boost. LOL... he must have had his driving music a bit loud and couldn't hear that funny turbojet sound from the 350. He's probably still trying to figure out how that Z car blew his doors off.
  22. Shift it more like a manual. Let off gas slightly, hit the shifter to +, and mash the pedal to the floor. It will slam into the next gear pretty quickly. At least faster than holding the gas pedal steady. It's still slower than a manual speed shift, but not much. Still not as fast a GT-R in R mode -- you can leave the pedal on the floor and get a 100 millisecond shift.
  23. Tere

    GT-R

    LOL... Sounds like the same line of horse hockey we get in the US from the Vette Z-06 folks. "All the pre-production GT-Rs are specially tuned ringers, and the production GT-Rs won't have near the performance." I'll chalk it up to wishful thinking since the production GT-Rs delivered so far in the US are turning up the same numbers as the pre-production ones. The Cobb Tuning AccessPort Map 1 ECM flash is giving 60+ hp and 70+ tq to otherwise bone stock GT-Rs. So what appears to be a totally stock GT-R could be a wee bit more than other drivers expect.
  24. Yeah, few folks are buying Nissan's 10% drivetrain loss because it's unheard of. For comparison, the 350Z 6MT has about a 17-18% loss (AT is even more, close to 20%). A 15% loss is considered excellent. Here in the US, the big GT-R competition is the Z-06 Vette, and the Z-06 folks are having a tough time figuring out how the GT-R is so fast since it has less crank HP and is heavier. I keep telling 'em to do the math. Z-06 -> 505 x .85 = 429 at wheels GT-R -> 480 x .90 = 432 at wheels Add all the other efficiencies and technology to that, and the GT-R rules! The other myth that the Z-06 folks are promulgating is the Z-06 will walk away from the GT-R above 100 mph. Not so fast Vettaroonie! Take a peek at the gear ratios; 5th and 6th are overdrives in the Z-06, and the GT-R has better gear ratios for acceleration in all 6 gears. This gives the Z-06 a slightly higher top end, but it takes it longer to get there. So until the GT-R starts getting close to top end, it's running a better gear ratio (keeping in mind HP at the wheels). Then you have to find a Z-06 driver with the cajones to run her up that high (over 185 mph) -- not many of those around in my experience. Most of you know how stable the 350 is at 150 mph (maybe above if you have the speed limiter flashed out). Well, the GT-R is reputed to be even more stable from what I've heard from folks who have driven both (I haven't had the opportunity yet to determine for myself). I don't expect 185 mph in the GT-R to be a white knuckle driving experience based on my experience with the 350. My '03 350 (about 590 hp at the crank) has similar performance numbers to those of the GT-R.
×
×
  • Create New...