On August 6, 2009, I purchased a 1999 Dodge Neon R/T that I have had my eye on since high school back in 2002-2003. A buddy of mine owned it and I told him from that point on that whenever he wanted to sell it, I wanted dibs.
As it turns out, he blew the motor up in it last year, 155,2xx miles later, and it sat in his yard over the course of this past winter. I was able to acquire it, and now I have a new project on my hands.
Description:
White w/blue stripes
2 door coupe
Power windows, Sunroof
155,2xx miles on body
Interior condition: 8/10 (One mark on driver's seat, one mark on rear seat)
Exterior condition: 7/10 (Dent on driver's upper quarterpanel/roofline, Dent on driver's quarterpanel by taillight, some knicks in paint = surface rust spots, some rock chips on front end). Passenger taillight is cracked and I need to install the good one I picked up from the junkyard.
Project Log Entry #1 - August 16, 2009
Last night, I putzed around a little bit with my buddy Silent Jim as we removed the headlight/parking light housings to be polished. We also removed the center grille bar in order to get the headlight assemblies out easier.
Today was the first day since buying the car that I've really had a chance to dive in head first in terms of wrenching on the car. I washed it off the night I brought it home but that was it. Today, I removed the entire interior (except for door panels and dash). I found the most difficult part of removing all the seats, console, carpet, and interior plastic trim to be the back seat. I snapped two extensions when trying to loosed the T-55 starbit bolts that hold the bracket for the seatbelts/upper portion of back seat in place.
Thus far, I vacuumed the entire carpet. With it being out of the car, it is a lot easier to ensure I get in every nook and cranny. I also wiped down all interior plastic trim. Tomorrow, I plan on giving the seats a nice shampooing and taking a set of Neon floormats I found at the junkyard to a car wash and pressure washing them in hopes that the clean up.
In addition to preparing the interior for a major cleaning, I also had the intent on pulling the interior out so I could look over the floors and innner quarters. Everything looks great!
One other note, the previous owner had tint put on the car and ended up getting pulled over back when the car still ran. He scraped it off all the windows except for a 1 ft. x 1 ft. section on the rear window. He left all the glue on the windows as well. I spent a good hour or so tonight going with a razorblade very carefully scraping that excess glue and tint off of the glass. I still have to rub a few more layers of windex on the glass, but they look 10x better already.
Tomorrrow, I plan on shampooing the seats as I mentioned along with the door panels. I will also be wiping down the entire interior to remove any dirt/debris that found its way under the carpeting and seats over the years. I do also plan on removing the headliner so I can strip the dirty cloth off and redo it to a dark grey color that will match the interior better in my opinion compared to light gray. By the end of tomorrow I hope to have most of the interior back together!