[1TONY1]

PM me the last 8 digits of the vin and I will pull the warranty history for you. It could tell us something.

 

[Chuck 98 RT10]

What would you do? Any input would be helpful.

Buy another Viper for your spouse.

 

[Buckeye Viper]

Heh. Sucks, doesn't it 1tony1?

 

[cgmaster]

I believe the PCM has a serial # on it or the vin # for the car it goes on so the Tech could tell you if it is the original one for your car. I don't know why anyone would change a PCM on a 97. Also the dealer can tell you the service history of the car if the service was done by an authorized dealer. My 1st stop however would be to talk to the previous owners to see what you can find out.

 

[viper spray]

I have had three different PCMs in my 97 so far.

 

[Paolo Castellano]

Help, husband and I bought a 97 GTS blue/white with 15,000 miles on it 2 weeks ago. (Mods....flywheel, headers, K & N). Heres the problem. 1 week after we bought it the speedometer and odometer stopped working. We took it to a Viper tech who looked at the PCM and said the car has 30,000 miles on it......the car was advertised as 15K and we were verbally told 15K....

What would you do? Any input would be helpful.

Viperwife, there are a couple of things nobody has mentioned so far:


1. Sometimes the factory PCM is off. When I bought my car in November of 1998 with 24,500 miles on it, the dealer did some warranty work and found the factory computer said 45,500 miles on it. I called the owner and he was insulted I was accusing him of tampering with the miles. In 1998 nobody was really driving their Vipers. At that time, most 1996 Vipers had maybe 3-5,000 miles on them. I remember him telling me that if he really wanted to tamper with the odometer, he would have put it back having way less than 24,500 miles. It did make sense to me. Since then, I know my factory computer has been off compared to the speedo head. It's no problem as the Viper techs can use the factory scan tool to re-synchronize the factory computer to the reading on the odometer.

2. With the ability to change the cumulative mileage on the factory computer, it would not be all that hard to get a speedo head from a wrecked Viper from a junk yard and get someone with a scan tool to match up the #'s.

I had a roll cage installed in my car and the speedo head got damaged from being very close to the roll cage. It took 3 tries to figure out a way to pad the speedo so it would not break. It was only $75-$100.00 each time I bought a speedo head from various junk yards.

Anyway, for what it's worth, as long as your car is a clean one that runs strong, I would not worry about it. My car made 465 RWHP and 503 RWTQ with only headers and no cats. I ran the piss out of the car going 180-190+ MPH every chance I got. The car was only down about 10 RWHP and RWTQ at around 70,000 miles. When the motor was taken apart to be rebuilt for some serious power a year and a half ago with 73,000 miles, the main bearings still looked brand new! :thumb:

 

[JT]

I mentioned to her early on that the PCM mileage might not be reliable. I offered to put her in touch with someone to help.

No PM's received.

 

[viperwife]

Thanks to all who have responded and given advice. We finally talked to the original owner who stated that the PCM had been switched out twice and was very insulted that we would even question his integrity. He is sending us all the records for the car. Just paronoid on our end after investing what is (to us) alot of money in a car. Sounds like this is a common occurance with Vipers.
So all is cool...everybody was on the up and up! Thanks again!