Viper VTX1

As I said last time I made the decision to sell my faithful Tekin RS Pro speedo and purchase the Viper VTX1 Speedo. Bit of a dive into the unknown as they currently don't have a distributer in the UK but I know a few guys who are getting good results with them and they are damn quick. Well I ordered the speedo, USB link and 4xCapacitor Module from A Main hobbies. A week later it turned up at my office and first impressions were..."ooooooooo preeetttyyy"! The rest of that day at work dragged like hell as I wanted to get home and wire it up!

So once I got home I was straight to the man cave and fired up the soldering iron. I first unboxed everything and check everything was looking correct. Very nice packaging from Viper, clear manuals and a very polished product.

Now onto the unit itself. First impression it is such a nice piece of kit, everything it neat and acurate. The solder posts are nicely marked and the switch/programming port are clearly marked. Very impressed. It is slightly heavier than expected but it does have an aluminium case! This will be very handy at spreading the heat generated.

I did go over the position of the speedo a hell of a lot before deciding on the final position, slightly hidden below the top deck as you can see below. Wiring a new speedo is something that fills me with dread I have to admit. The fear that if you cock it up and wire it up wrong lots of your hard earned cash goes up in a poof of smoke! I started by removing the standard two capacitor board which took a bit of work and force even though I was using a 100watt soldering iron. I alway take care with my wiring but with a new speedo I am doubly careful, there for it took me about 1 hour to solder 5 wires.






It seems such a waste of a beautiful bit of kit to hide it away like this but it should work well there. So I fired it up to calibrate it and make sure it worked. The setup proceed is very straight forward and it worked straight away. Life Jim but not as we know it! Very pleased as it is a long way to send it back!
So now onto the USB link. This is just a file you download from the Viper website. Plugged the USB link and it picked up the driver from the internet and installed happy as larry. I then put the Viper into programming mode by holding the button down for one second and connecting the USB link. Software picked up the speedo straight away and saw that the firmware needed updating. It ran through the update fairly quickly and when it completed it prompted me to redo the radio calibration. Recalibrated the radio, all working fine so plugged it back into the USB to have a play with the settings. The UI is very nice and informative, it also gives hand hints as to what each setting does. I haven't played much I just put some settings on to make sure boost was working. The answer is yes it working, I only give a bit of throttle on the bench but it sounded damn quick, probably a psychological thing but I liked it.


Viper also include a tool called the proguage, a handy credit card sized programmer that is very cool. It is very easy to hook up to the speedo and change all the settings.

Overall I am very impressed with the first impressions of this product. Obviously we will have to see how it performs on the track but I am confident that I will be as quick if not quick than before. Will be Chesterfield on the 22nd to have a play!

On another note the entry for the Autosport International GT Cup has opened up. Simple rules to start but there may bodyshell restrictions:

http://www.brca.org/sites/www.brca.org/files/library_files/gbevens/Autosports%20GT%20Cup%20Entry%20Form.pdf

Get your entry in for a chance to be at one of the greatest races of all times!!