A few weeks ago a fellow member contacted me to get some work done on his truck. He had recently purchased it from Arizona, truck was good looking but needed some work done. Truck had about 90k miles and we didn’t know any of the maintenance from the previous owner. He had some work done from a shop in Arizona before he drove it up to California. The shop did some shady work, over filled the oil 10qts, wrong weight 5W40, did a transmission flush, replaced upper control arms and lower ball joints. The control arms and ball joints were good, so we decided on a full tune up and all the fluids changed out. Below are some pictures of the truck and work done.
I started by removing the throttle body and cleaning all the gunk/oil out. Sometimes the throttle body blades tend to stick with all the build up which can affect idle. Throttle body gasket was all dried out from the engine bay heat and that Arizona heat. Throttle body cleaned up nice, replaced with a new gasket and bolted it up to specs.
Next was to replace the valve cover gaskets which had been leaking and to clean up the valve covers from all the gunk/oil. Cleaned everything out, replaced with new gaskets and torqued to specs.
More pictures of the valve covers getting cleaned up with new gaskets. They cleaned up really nice, nicer than before.
Next was to fix the oil issue that was done by the shop in Arizona. I drained all the 5W40 oil that they added 10qts of. Removed the wrong oil filter that they put, you can see it’s way too small for the truck. It was actually leaking a little bit. Replaced the filter with the correct viper filter and topped her off with the correct 0W40 8.5qts.
Next was the rear differential, gasket was leaking and the gear oil was old. Cleaned everything out, new rtv gasket, bolts torqued to specs and new 75w140 with limited slip friction modifier added.
We decided on new O2 sensors front/rear because the truck had thrown some O2 sensor codes and pretty sure they were 15yr old O2 sensors.
48re was up next. The shop in Arizona had done a flush, which is definitely a no go. I looked/smelled the fluid and look/smelled old to me. I wouldn’t be surprised if they never even messed with it. Magnet was covered in metal shavings.Truck also had a stutter from 1-2 gear under light throttle. I dropped the pan, cleaned everything out, adjusted front/rear band to specs, replaced governor pressure sensor with a new bigger Borg Warner, replaced with a new transducer, new filter, new gasket, bolts torqued to specs and topped off with new mopar ATF.
Next was to replace the idler pulley, belt tensioner, and belt with new components. Belt was showing signs of some cracking and everything else was aged.
Next was to replace the spark plugs and clean out the metal spark plug wire boot heat shields. Heat shields were dirty from the road gunk and the leaking valve cover gaskets. The spark plug wire booted were dirty also so I cleaned them out the best I could. New champion spark plugs were added, gapped to specs, anti seize added and dielectric grease added. They both cleaned up pretty good.
Next I replaced the air filter with a new one, the old one definitely needed to be replaced. I didn’t want to up sale him on a K&N drop in because he eventually wants to put a cold air intake in the truck.
One of the spark plug wires had the terminal come off the boot. I made a temporary fix by adding a terminal while we waited on more parts.
More parts came in, so I also replaced the coils and the spark plug wires. I had forgotten why I hated to remove the intake manifold. But once I got to the rear boltS I quicky remembered why. We went with JTSVP spark plug wires and screamin demon coils. Clean all the ports and taped them up. Replaced the coils and each spark plug wire individually. I also decided to replace #8 spark plug again, since we were previously getting a misfire. New intake manifold gaskets were m added and everything torqued to specs.
Everything was done over 3 weekends due parts and both of us having families and work. I appreciate him giving me a call and I’m glad I was able to help out. Really cool guy that I consider a friend now and a fellow viper owner!
Two gorgeous trucks! Tell your buddy to get his valve covers powder coated, I'm going to have mine done soon.