Neon R/T Resurrection

[DC Turismo]

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!

[DC Turismo]

I forgot to add in my first post, with the motor currently being blown in the car, I sourced out a R/T drivetrain from a local salvage yard that is coming out of an identical twin to my car. The car was driven into the salvage yard prior to parts being disassembled from it. It has 116,xxx miles, and due to this, I will be doing some major overhauling on the motor this upcoming week once I get it home.

My plans for it are:
Paint 2.0 DOHC embossed valve cover Viper Blue with aluminum letters
Paint block factory Black
Paint Intake Mani. dark silver/gray
Clean aluminum parts (head, transmission, alternator, etc) and clearcoat

Change timing belt
Change headgasket
Change valve stem seals
Change rear main seal
Change intake mani. gasket
Change valve cover gasket
Change headbolts
Change water pump
Change clutch *** While motor is being torn apart anyways, check and change clutch as preventitive maintenance.
Change plugs & wires
Change fluids

Performance-wise, I have ordered a JRB 2.5" catback exhuast that I will be using to replace the factory exhaust. The car has a huge fart can attached to it now, so I figured rather than mess with locating leaks/holes, replacing a fart can, etc. I may as well just attach a performance exhaust that fits to the factory hangers while the motor is out anyways. I have also obtained a throttle body from an automatic 95-99 Neon which is 52mm rather than the 49mm diameter that 5 speeds came equipped with. I do plan on locating a 3.0 V6 minivan intake hose to use as a makeshift CAI that goes in front of the motor rather than behind it like most aftermarket CAI's do.

After the motor is running and the interior is put back together, I hope to fix the few small cosmetic dings and chips here and there to make the car look a little bit better. My sunroof tracks are broken I believe, so I will need to replace the entire assembly at some point, preferably before winter, to prevent any leaking of water. Lastly, I am sporting the factory 14" rims through winter which I need to clean up, while at the same time prepping a set of 6.5" crab rims to have ready for spring! I'm doing them up gunmetal with a polished lip. That should look fantastic!


I am considering going with a Mopar Performance PCM if I find one, as well as a short throw shifter, underdrive pulley, booger shifter cable bushings, and new brake shoes all around.

[Dodge Aries K]

Get yourself a good solid bobble strut instead of the stock crap Chrysler puts on these things. Also, get some new engine mounts and get the inserts for them. Trust me on that... I've owned a few Neons over the past few years and that makes them very happy. On the other hand, I'll take some interior vibrations over slop in the drivetrain any day of the week.

[DC Turismo]

Thanks Karl, I'll look into those. ModernPerformance.com I assume?

[WickedShelby88]

That sounds awesome Billy! Congrats on the purchase. Looking forward to pics!

[Force Fed Mopar]

2.4 swap or ban

[cordes]

I know there were pics in the other thread, but come on man.

[turbovanman²]

Dude, ban for no pics,

[DC Turismo]

LOL Pics should be up tomorrow, sorry guys I keep forgetting my camera in the garage haha....



UPDATED - AUGUST 17
Last night after my post I was cruising the net looking for Neon parts when I stumbled across a sale on 2.5" JRB catback exhaust systems for $150 Since it uses the factory hangers, comes with a muffler, and should give me a nice sound as well as performance, I went ahead and purchased one. I can't wait to get it on considering the car currently has a rusty looking 2.25" exhaust with a dinged up $20 fart can from eBay attached on it, barf!

Today, I went ahead and disassembled, vaccuumed, and shampooed the seats that I removed from the car yesterday. They didn't really need done, but I'm a perfectionist when it comes to doing everything myself on my cars to ensure they're clean and looking the best they can. Some small spots that were before unnoticed did come out after applying the cleaner, and I'm very happy with the results. They smell great and the cleaning process went fairly easy besides taking a few hours. First I wet the fabric with a rag, then sprayed the soap suds from the upholstery cleaner can on so that they could soak in for a minute or two. I scrubbed the fabric with the brush that came with the cleaner while, every few scrubs, I would rinse the brush off in a bucket of clean water. I then vacuumed over the area I just scrubbed. With the humidity being as bad as it was today, these puppies dried in no time!

I also decided to remove the headliner tonight around 11:00 and peeled off the old fabric and wire brushed the glue to get a clean surface to glue new fabric on tomorrow. The R/T's came with a light gray headliner, oh sh!t handle, and sunvisors. But since the rest of the interior is a darker gray, I am giong to go that route and change it up to finish off the dark interior look. I plan on having the headliner glued on in the morning by 11 AM which would give me a good headstart in getting the interior all back together in the car tomorrow. The only drawback is that the sliding cover for the sunroof is also light gray, but I have no clue how to remove that thing from the car???????? Any suggestions? I see two options 1) get a battery in the car, send the sunroof back, pull the cover forward, and see if it will lift out the top - OR - 2) remove all the bolts for the sunroof from inside the car and maybe it will drop out that way?


Lastly, my neighbor just had a dent wizard guy come up and take out a few dings on his car and the guy diid a great job. Since my interior is completely out of the car for cleaning, I am thinking that I will call the dent wizard guy tomorrow and set up an appointment to see if he can pop out the fist dent on the upper qiuarter, the shopping buggy dent on the quarter by the taillight, and three small door dings on the same quarter (all driver's side). I figure if he charges somewhere around $50 per panel, I maybe will only have a $100 wrapped up in getting those fixed, which would be awesome.



Motor for the car is going to get picked up tomorrow too at some point. I'll get pics of it as well as the rest of my progress uploaded tomorrow! Sorry in advance lol.... Let the suspense build.

[turbovanman²]

Are you planning on turbocharging it?

[contraption22]

Be very careful with your muffler choice. It's very easy to get a neon to sound ricey with the wrong muffler.

The stock DOHC exhaust is actually a really good piece and hard to improve upon unless you are doing some fairly radical engine mods.

[DC Turismo]

This is the exhaust I purchased:

http://www.modernperformance.com/inc...on-p-1946.html

[contraption22]

I'm not sure what that exhaust sounds like. Are you keeping the cat?

[turbovanman²]

It could be a welded Flo Pro or Walker Ultra Flo is it? It should sound decent.

[Sgt Craig]

I would have chose the Dynomax.It isnt much louder than stock.i forgot to add in my Pm while you have the trans out it wouldnt be a bad idea to install the safing tabs so the diff pin doesnt see day light.Quite a common occurance on them.

[Force Fed Mopar]

From what I've read, the TB on the 2.0 quickly becomes a restriction, and also a larger TB apparently makes the exhaust sound better due to less restriction. I've read several times that the small stock TB gives it the ricey blat in the exhaust note.

[contraption22]

From what I've read, the TB on the 2.0 quickly becomes a restriction, and also a larger TB apparently makes the exhaust sound better due to less restriction. I've read several times that the small stock TB gives it the ricey blat in the exhaust note.

Just upgrading to the TB from an automatic 1st gen Neon makes a nice difference. I've never heard of it changing the exhaust note tho. It didn't on mine.

[Sgt Craig]

Just upgrading to the TB from an automatic 1st gen Neon makes a nice difference. I've never heard of it changing the exhaust note tho. It didn't on mine.

Never did on any of mine of course its hard to tell when your running 12.5-1 through a open header

[DC Turismo]

Not turbocharging it Simon.......... yet Maybe down the road after all of our other projects are done around here. SRT-4 R/T would be awesome to say the least hahaha


Anyways, let me first aplogize for no pics. I have taken a number of them, but the last two days the camera, once turned out, keeps saying format error and will not let me do anything with it (view, take, upload) pics. So while I work on that P.I.A. tomorrow, let me update you guys on what I've done the last two days. I didn't get on yesterday because I had a Fantasy Football Draft at a buddy's house. Anyways, here we go:

I haven't made as much progress as I'd have liked at this point due to me being tedious about little things that I keep finding. First and foremost, though, I went to the salvage yard to pay for the motor I got for this that came out of an identical twin to my car (only difference was that it was a 98 with cruise control). While I was there, I walked back to the car and snagged a mint passenger sunvisor as well as the clips that hold the driver's side power window bezel to the door panel (mine were missing on my car). Once I got home, although it was hella hot, I decided it was time to experiment on removing that sliding sunroof shade cover. To make a long story short, I ended up removing the ENTIRE sunroof/track/mechanism only to realize once it was out of the car that all I had to do was remove six starbit screws from the track assembly so the sunroof glass would pop out. This allowed me to access four springy pins that held that sunshade cover in place. After compressing them, poof, off it came with no problems at all!

Following this, I removed the old headliner from the shade cover and also scraped off the old glue with a razor blade. Once I completed this I ran out to our local JoAnn Fabrics store and purchased black headliner material. I wanted dark grey, but they only had light grey so I went with the darkest color there. I bought two huge pieces of it (one for the headliner board, one for the sunshade cover) for around $35 and one can of 3M Super Heavy Duty Adhesive from Advance Auto for $20. Before I sprayed the headliner, I first wanted to redye the little plastic pieces that hold the headliner up (like the sunshade cover handle, the sunvisor clips, the oh sh!t handle for the passenger side, the sunroof hole molding strip, and the headliner buttons). I opted to paint them black too compared to the light grey. I figured by keeping it light gray there'd be too much of a contrast. Now, the only light gray in the car besides the carpet will be the sunvisors because I am not about to redo those myself lol....

When all was said and done, the only additional thing I did besides putting another coat of paint on those small interior items was swapped out the busted passenger taillight and replaced it with a very nice one from a junkyard find. By then it was time to put everything away to attend my football draft.

Today was a different story though, as I got a TON of stuff done.

[DC Turismo]

I woke up early and drove my ever trusty Ram 150 up to the salvage yard to pick up my motor. Talk about clean! Just wait til I post pics of it. I'm almost tempted to just throw the thing in as is and drive it, but I'd rather be safe than sorry and redo all the gaskets, seals, clutch, timing belt, water pump, etc. while its out of the car. Anyhow, looking the motor over, a Mobil 1 filter is on it, leading me to believe (crossing fingers) that the previous owner of the car took good care of the motor with nice oil choices, etc. The motor's home, and I'll get to it here in the next week or so in terms of doing all that preventitive maintence stuff as well as painting it.

Once it was home, I wanted to get working on the car, especially since they were calling for storms all day and I had a big hole in the roof of my car with only a tarp blocking the elements from getting inside. Pat helped me spray both the headliner board and the sunroof shade and apply the headliner material to both. They came out great. I let them dry all afternoon before I made any cuts in the headliner as well as before I did any tucking/glueing to the backside.

Once the sunroof shade was finished, Pat snapped the handle in for me and we reattached it to the sunroof assembly. I noticed some surface rust along the edge of the roofline down inside where the sunroof tracks rest (from water build up I imagine considering the car sat for a long while). I scraped at the bubbly spots and brushed some white rustoleum over it in hopes that at least it may slow that surface rust down from coming back. We'll see. I also touched up a little bit of surface rust by both front drain plugs in the sunroof track itself. We bolted the entire sunroof assembly back inside the car before screwing the sunroof glass into place. What a difference the black headliner material made, I'll say that much. It look awesome on that sunroof door!

I was going to put the headliner in at this point but I realized I still had to tuck the fabric to the backside. Because of this, I also think I want to hold off and change the sunroof motor while the headliner is out so that I don't mess it up by pulling it down to do so later. Tomorrow I plan on hitting up the junkyards and finding some motors to try out since mine clicks anytime you hold the button in either going forward or going back. It clicks terribly loud and vibrates the hold roof. I assume a gear is bad or something inside of it. If I can't find another motor I just plan on not using the sunroof period, which will probably be better anyhow since they're known to break anyways.


Since I was stuck in this regard, I decided that since the sunroof is now in and the car is once again sealed, I could probably get the interior pieced back together as much as possible. I washed out and vacuumed the entire interior shell of the car, removing all of the dirt/dust buildup from the last ten years and ridding the car of any trash that slipped under the seats/carpet over the years. It looks so much better than it did, I'm very happy with the results.

THe next step was to put the carpet back in so I could bolt in the freshly shampooed front seats and cleaned up center console. Here, my pickiness got in the way and I noticed a few stains here and there on the carpet. I folded it up, shoved it in a big rubber maid container, and along with a pair of dirty --- floormats I got at the junykard a couple weeks ago, headed to the local car wash where I pressure washed/purple powered/turtle wax upholstery cleaned soap sudded both the carpet and floormats. The carpet cleaned up great, no stains/dirt spots remain at all. The floormats didnt clean up so well (seeing that they sat in an unsealed Neon for the last two years exposed to all elements and rusty rotars laying on top of them, I couldn't expect much anyways). I'll use the floormats for winter. Currently the carpet is drying out so that come tomorrow morning, I can lay it back inside the car, bolt in the front seats and center console so that the interior can start coming back together.

I'm going to leave the back seat and both interior quarter panel plastics out of the car until the dent wizard guy can stop up and fix the one dent the car has first.


After reinstalling the carpet and front portion of the interior, I plan on getting the headliner situated up in there with all of the newly painted plastic pieces attached as well to hold it in place. IF I can get this all done tomorrow, I'll be very satisfied and will most likely start removing pieces of the engine/disconnecting wiring so that this motor can be pulled perhaps as early as this weekend. Only time will tell.


On a side note/future reference, I've located a brand new Mopar Modular Clutch/Throwout Bearing as well as a Mopar Performance ECM that should be arriving late next week.

Tomorrow, while looking for a sunroof motor, I also need a passenger door panel plastic handle or cubby, whatever its called, a passenger side b-pillar trim piece, and the covers at the bottom of both front seatbelts that conceal the bolt that holds them to the floor. I had grabbed a TB off of an Automatic Neon at the junkyard a couple weeks ago but it does not look like a 52mm one by any means. I have to look for another one of those and I can't forget about a airox hose from a V6 mid 90s Chrysler Minivan or 3.3 Dynasty from what I understand for the purpose of connected it to the TB and running a piece of pipe down from it, caticorner to the battery tray, attaching a filter to it in order to get the best cold air intake style setup possible. I hope to find all of those and install them too if all goes to plan.



Again, I'll get pics up ASAP. The one pic I do have is of our Ram with my motor in the back that I took with my cell phone. I'll upload it as soon as it reaches my email.


Thanks for reading