mopar1rules
Active member
the damage on the piston crown isn't from deto!!! its from the debris of the lower rod bearing coming apart. sorry to tell you Snowshovel, but the vipers have been pretty common for the center rod bearing letting go. others will disagree, but its been happening to enough of them, where its a fact. it wasn't bad gas, or your jetting. same exact thing happened to a buddy of mine on his '02 viper. he had 5400 miles on his, when his let go. plug color was a safe chocolate brown to cardboard brown, so it wasn't jetting. i feel its the oil pump being too damn lean. i preach and preach, you gotta tighten up the oil pump cable freeplay to .700"-.750". the sooner that pump goes into full pump mode, to sooner those bearings are getting nailed w/lubrication and the better off the engine is in the long run. tear down the engine, send the crank out to get repaired, get new cylinder (i have 1 too if you want it), pickup new head, get new piston/rings/gaskets, and slap it back together and run it. your power valve cleaning had nothing to do w/what happened. that fellow you bought it from, just happened to get rid of it @ the right time......lucky for him.....bad for you.