Need advice on what to do with Viper

I

iamb4u

New member
Joined
Dec 13, 2008
Messages
21
Age
49
Location
Michigan
Hey guys.

Its been a while since I've been on here, or really been on my sled for that matter.

I've got an '02 Viper first off.

Some history:
I was running down some back roads a few years back and the track blew apart at high speed. Outer left edge ripped where the outter stud was at. When the track split, it whipped around pretty violent and did some pretty good damage to the tunnel, and bent the rear grab bar as well. I let the sled sit for the remainder of the winter and last year went ahead and put another track on it.

When I had the skid out, everything seemed workable to me, and I did some more back roading when we had snow... not a ton of miles.
The wife and I went up north to Curtis and after running some good trail miles I noticed the track kept loosing and would not run true. That pretty much finished the season out, and after moving and such over summer I never got back to wrenching on this thing.

I got into it a bit today, and found the left hyfax extremly wore on it's left edge. Its shot, and was brand new before our trip. I'm also seeing that the bearings in the rear bogie wheels are shot as well... bearings blew apart.

What I'm trying to determine, is if the wheels may have caused the track to loosen as it was, or if the tunnel may be so tweaked so much that the side load it was creating maybe caused the bearings to fail.

Whats the best way to measure the tunnel and see if it's still straight enough to run, or figure the sled totalled?

I've got no insurance on the thing, so if it's wasted I'm out of luck.

Thanks for any insight anyone has... I'm just getting into this thing to decide. A new sled is not in the picture for me, so I'm hoping for the best here.

:o|
 
Had a buddy with the exact same problem and it ended up being a bent rail. He'd go through a set of slides in 500 km, well one side anyways lol, right down to the aluminum! Check the skid first would be my 2 cents :)
 
Guess I'll get the skid pulled back out and see what everything looks like in there to start then... gotta replace bearings and slides anyway now. lol

Thanks for the feedback, I'll post up with what I find out.

:neutral:
 
Well, got the skid out from under the sled last night, and found about every bearing either blown out or pretty hard to move. The rails seem pretty straight from what I can tell by a tape measure... I'm assuming a measurement from the front and one at the back being the same should point to the rail being true correct?


I lent this thing out to a buddy last season, and he ran it for a few weeks. I've got no idea what the thing was even doing the last few hundred miles, so don't know how long it was even ran in this condition. Looks like new slides and a bunch of new bearings. I think I'm going to pull the jackshalf and do those bearings too since I'm digging into it.

#$%&*
 
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Take measurments atleast at 6 different points on the rails to verify. If the tunnel was tweaked installing the suspension would b either extremely difficult or near impossible. Remove your shocks and check to make sure that your bushings in the arms are not shot allowing the rails to come out of align under acceleration and deceleration, then carefully inspect the arms for cracks and or cracked paint indicating a tweak in the metal. I'm not sure how to check the tunnel w/o special tools...
 
Will be cheaper to put different used skid in and be much better ride,,, PS... don't loan it out..........
 
iamb4u said:
Hey guys.

Its been a while since I've been on here, or really been on my sled for that matter.

I've got an '02 Viper first off.

Some history:
I was running down some back roads a few years back and the track blew apart at high speed. Outer left edge ripped where the outter stud was at. When the track split, it whipped around pretty violent and did some pretty good damage to the tunnel, and bent the rear grab bar as well. I let the sled sit for the remainder of the winter and last year went ahead and put another track on it.

When I had the skid out, everything seemed workable to me, and I did some more back roading when we had snow... not a ton of miles.
The wife and I went up north to Curtis and after running some good trail miles I noticed the track kept loosing and would not run true. That pretty much finished the season out, and after moving and such over summer I never got back to wrenching on this thing.

I got into it a bit today, and found the left hyfax extremly wore on it's left edge. Its shot, and was brand new before our trip. I'm also seeing that the bearings in the rear bogie wheels are shot as well... bearings blew apart.

What I'm trying to determine, is if the wheels may have caused the track to loosen as it was, or if the tunnel may be so tweaked so much that the side load it was creating maybe caused the bearings to fail.

Whats the best way to measure the tunnel and see if it's still straight enough to run, or figure the sled totalled?

I've got no insurance on the thing, so if it's wasted I'm out of luck.

Thanks for any insight anyone has... I'm just getting into this thing to decide. A new sled is not in the picture for me, so I'm hoping for the best here.

:o|
Click to expand...


Seems to me that if the rear wheel bearings were shot (to the point of losing all the roller balls) you'd end up with track mis-alignment and loose track tension. I think you'd expect to find excessive wear of the edges of the slides from the track clips due to the mis-alignment which sounds like what you're finding.

While it's out go over it via BeTheViper's tips.
 
Oh yeah, and the W arm is wasted as several people had mentioned.
I guess now I need to get this thing reinforced and repaired or buy a new one and reinforce it.

Anyone got anything?
 
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