Importing a Gen 5 to the UK

[helipilot]

Hi guys,

I'm new here so be gentle with me!

I'm in the military and am currently stationed in the USA for the next 18 months. I've got my name on the waiting list for a new Corvette Z06 but, with the big price drops, I'm considering buying a Viper TA instead. When I finish out here I will be looking at bringing the car back home to the UK. Does anyone know what mods would be needed to get it through testing in the UK? Would the Satnav work over here (is it disc based) as I know the corvette one won't? What's insurance like compared to something like an Aston Martin V8 Vantage? Any other advice?

Many thanks,

Mark

[Fatboy 18]

Welcome to the forums and the UK VOA :)

I'm not familiar with the latest rules, Viper Dave or Baz would be the guys to contact, Im sure Dave will be along here soon.

The T/A would be one hell of a car over here in the UK! I don't know of any Gen Vs in the UK at this time. Insurance wise the car would be classed as an Import.

Some of us use CCI Competition Car Insurance, which also gives you up to 6 track days a year on the policy. We also get a club discount. Being as the car would be in the Upper price bracket, you may need to look at companies that specialise in Supercars, Ferrari, Lambo etc, but you may hit barriers when they can't find the car on their system (because its an Import). Im sure some of the guys can steer you in the right direction :) Insurance would also depend on weather this was to be a Daily drive car or a Garaged Toy? (in which case a limited mileage policy might be cheaper?

The Testing is now called IVA It would concentrate on lights etc, Viper Dave knows a hell of a lot more on this than I do.

Thank you for your Service and Good luck with the quest for a Viper.
Have a safe deployment.

[8.4L 154]

Sorry i was sleeping on the job

I'll caveat that all my experience is around the gen 4 rather than gen 5 but should be similar and whilst i have seen a gen 5 from behind the velvet rope in my local FL dealer i haven't looked at one with a view of importing.

I'm sure you are aware that if you own it in the US for a certain amount of time and then return home and keep it for a while you will avoid the taxes!

Anyway if you bring a Gen5 TA to the UK as mark says you will have one of the rarest cars on UK roads, so rare that anything rarer just isn't here! As far as we know there are still only 2 Gen4 ACR's in the UK!.

Anyway as far as mod's go in order to register, most of your headaches will come from the lighting. you will need a fog light on the back, it has to operate in a certain way so the simplest solution if to take a feed from the dip beam headlight through a switch and relay to drive the fog bulb out the back, either convert a brake light or add a new light, if converting a light you need to remember that a minimum 10cm has to be maintained between fog and brake light, just be prepared to drill a hole in your nice new dash for the switch and put it somewhere meeting the standards, preferably in the protection zone behind the steering wheel. Re-purposing the front fog switch on the indicator stalk is a nightmare as they are all digital CAN bus now, so you cant find any one wire that carries the switch signal.

Other things to add are side indicator repeaters, for mine i just took a feed from the headlight indicator and ran it to LED strips on the side, For IVA i had an ugly stick on e marked LED light on the outside of the wing above the side vents, once i had the bit of paper i replaced them with nice low profile led strips hidden in the sculpted area of the vent. Another problem one is side lights, they have visibility angle requirements that are actually quite hard to achieve from most places you want to put a side light on the front of a viper, I ended up with LED strips above the headlights, the Gen5 running lights in the headlight may satisfy the requirement or be easily modified though.

HID headlights are another problem, For the IVA they will need headlight washers and self leveling, best bet is to just pull the HID bulb and fit a halogen bulb for the test, the one i found (h7 i think) sort of fitted the HID holder and i made a wire clip out of piano wire to hold it in place and crossed my fingers on the heat and current draw, it only stayed in place for the IVA test :-) Things like this would worry me more on a gen5 given it makes the Gen4 look like clockwork in terms of on-board electronics.

pretty much everything else is covered by the Federal motor vehicle safety standards (FMVSS) and EPA emissions standards, so once the IVA tester sees the stickers for those he will cross out most of the test providing it is as it left the factory.

the IVA manual is here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/iva-manual-for-vehicle-category-m1 if you print it out it will stand about 3-4" tall, by the time you pull out the bits you can ignore due to FMVSS its about 1/2 - 1" tall!

Sat nav likely wont work unless it is disk based and you can get a UK disk, chances are the radio will be pretty useless anyway as the US uses a different step size between channels to Europe, so whilst you can get some channels that happen to match or are close enough, a lot of them are missing, On the gen 4 i used the old club to get Herb h to ask around in dodge if there was some magic key combination to change the region of the radio and the end result was, no there wasn't, but he did give me the part number of a compatible UK version of the radio that was used in voyagers and PT cruisers in the UK and i picked a nearly new one up off ebay

Insurance is too individual to comment, CCI were about the only place that i found to insure the value of a new viper, and THE only place that would do it on the VIN alone during the IVA testing.

[slowhatch]

^ talk about a useful reply!

[Vprbite]

Yeah. I think rolling a TA around the UK would be badass. Talk about rare. Though it definitely sounds like you have some hoops to jump through. I bet you a good Viper tech or high end stereo shop could do the exact mods you needed. A high end stereo shop will be the best for wiring as that is what they do and see all day.

For instance, they may be able to easily run a fog light in the rear for you off of a switch on the dash. They can probably use an LED and just pull power off of the tail lights to run it.

It would be really nice to keep it here long enough and avoid the taxes. What part of the States are you in? Perhaps someone can give you a recommendation on a shop that can help you do the changes to pass your import tests. A good shop could even make the side LED strips look cool and not like they were just crammed on there. I would think the best thing to do would be get the changes needed done here where you have easier access to Viper techs and dodge dealers that will know the wiring well and could order you the correct parts for anything that needs done.

Best of luck.

[Fatboy 18]

And don't forget to bring over a container full of tires too! They are bloody expensive here :(

[VIPER BAZ UK]

Personally done GEN 1,2,3 for IVA but not a 4 or 5 yet.....

Dave Knight is a fully Qualified auto electrician and IVA specialist http://caraudiosecurity.com/ and a very good personel friend and his attention to detial is perfect.. He has been around Mustangs vetts and vipers for 10 years...

Viperdave did his own Gen 4 ACR and done a very good job also.. So with all the help here in the UK anything is possible Just be carefull which IVA centre you pick..

[8.4L 154]

Thanks Barry.

I would add if your going to get someone else to do the work then you want someone over here (UK), preferably someone who comes with a recommendation like Barry's friend. As good as a viper tech may be, and even the best of them in the USA, they wont know the UK regulations or be inclined to figure out the IVA manual which although large still leaves a good chunk of things a bit vague, and unclear if what you have will be good enough, and like everything where a government official has to make a decision, a lot of it will be down to the one you get on the day and their pet thing to check and fail for the tiniest reason.

I treated my first IVA test as a opportunity to get a list of things i needed to fix, so I was over the moon when i walked away with a certificate. I did a few things because the internet and IVA manual said so, things that were not even looked at! But end of the day its no use at that point if you fail, having the person that did all the work 3000 miles away.

[VIPER BAZ UK]

Myself and Dave use the Same IVA centre and tester Doug

Dave also worked for Atlantic Sports cars IVA'ing all there new US vehicles..