Category Archives: Automotive

Viper Wheel Removal

Posted on by

Viper Wheel Removed

I took both right wheels off my car today. It was a lot harder than it sounds due to the super low clearance of the car — only about 5 inches between the ground and the frame! After a lot of work, it’s now sitting on wood blocks.

Tomorrow I’ll be using Plasti Dip temporary spray paint to paint the wheels as a mockup to see if I like the blacked out wheel look. I’m strongly considering getting them all powder coated black and this is a good way to see if I like it. Plati Dip is a rubber-like paint that peels off if I want it to. While meant for things like tools, it has a huge following in the automotive world, especially for things like wheels.

For scale, that piece of wood is 6 inches wide (it’s a 4×6″). Yes, it’s a massive tire!

My Rental Car For The Week: A Ford Fusion

Posted on by

I’m in Georgia for the week to attend the WordPress Community Summit and I have a rental car for the week in order to get around. It’s one of the newer Ford Fusions:

Ford Fusion

From a design standpoint, I like it, especially the interior. However the seats are rather hard and the automatic transmission is rather slow to shift. That said I keep trying to hit the clutch pedal and I’m not used to an automatic transmission so for all I know this is how all automatic transmissions are like.

In The Shop

Posted on by

The passenger side window regulator started failing on me and needed to be replaced. Apparently it’s a pretty common problem in Vipers due to the design of the mechanism. Thankfully it’s covered by the extended factory warranty that came with the car so it’s only a $100 deductible, otherwise it’d be over $1200. Ouch.

San Diego Road Trip Final Route

Posted on by

Just for fun I put together a map of the route I took to San Diego and back on my roadtrip in my Viper. It was long (over 3100 miles!) and gas was expensive ($851.02, 16.3 miles per gallon) but it was 110% worth it. Thanks again to Stephane and Evan for riding shotgun with me on the way down and the way back, respectively. I had a great time!

How To Install An iPod Adapter Kit In A Dodge Viper

Posted on by

Disclaimer: This post is going to be useful to very, very few people but I suspect for those people it will be super helpful, so here we go.

When I bought my 2008 Dodge Viper, it came with the standard type of radio for that time period — a simple radio and CD player. However who the hell listens to CDs anymore? I certainly don’t so I set out to be able to hook my iPhone up to my car.

While I easily found a kit to do this for my Mustang, Vipers are a much rarer car so there are way fewer solutions. That said this same radio is used throughout many different Chrysler Group cars so it may be worth seeing if you can find a kit meant for a different car but the same radio.

I decided to go the official route by using the Mopar iPod Interface Kit (82209616). It was designed for iPods rather than iPhones so it’s not perfect, but we’ll get to that later.

Read the rest of this guide »