In the "Serious Automotive Question v. LSx swap" I was recalling doing a c clutch in a Dodge Viper (T56 equipped) about two or three years ago that I thought (the transmission removal & reinstallation) was pretty easy, and light weight.

I figured out why the Viper transmission I did was so light.

I ran into a guy that worked with the owner of the car I did the clutch on, at a bar recently. (He is a higher-up of the BMW Oracle trimaran design/build team that was all over the news a few weeks back)

and is a huge Viper fanatic, currently owns 4 of them. Thick Sweedish accent, very intelligent (he's an engineer), very wealthy but also down to earth.)

What I knew about the car beforehand was that he either a. purchased the car and had it turbocharged and modified by Hennessey or b. bought it already Hennessified and in either case, drove it for awhile. And he was extremely dissatisfied with the engineering of the Hennessey kit and removed it. (Among others, the turbochargers were all wrong, the manifolds were poorly designed and required cutting of the frame and subframe, and the bracing and patchwork to support such a kit were inadequate). So he pulled everything out and put the *engine* back to stock and was pretty much daily driving this thing to work (even though he has free BMW's, I think he drives an X5 in the winter.) When I worked on it the full fuel system was intact with a trick one-off isolation mounted Aeromotive A1000, all the suspension work still on the car. And I noticed the aftermarket multiplate clutch.

Due to him supplying all the parts, and fabricating a perfect clutch alignment tool at his work in about 10 minutes- he literally walked up to our shop, took some measurements, walked down to his shop and was back with a billet aluminum Viper clutch tool in less then 15 minutes- what I did not know until the other day was that he also had a $15,000 Quaife racing transmission and custom aluminum driveshaft, which explains why I thought all the components were really light weight when I helped lift the transmission down and back into the car (it was on a 4 post lift). The transmission, bellhousing, driveshaft- it all looked stock.

Check out the awesome off-the-shelf bellhousing:

(No gearshift lever position indicator on the one I did)

http://www.autotech.com/quaife/transmissions/rwd/33g.htm

In fact, I am pretty sure that the pictured car on that page, is owned and being driven by this guy. One of his four (Three when I met him and worked on the car) Vipers 'back home' was a track car, and I am (mildly) speculating that is it.

Weekend alcoholism resulted in edumacation. Amazing.