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Reevaluating and Rallycrossing the Neon May 16, 2008

The Neon gets pulled off the berm that ended our day. We take a break for lunch after a dusty morning.

We've put a few thousand miles on our Neon and honestly, we love it. It's a great car for chuffing back and forth from work, gets great mileage and it's an awesome rallycross car. So, we're now wondering if we should invest a few more bucks and get the Neon that we really want...a sedan (preferably an ACR) in better shape. Decisions, Decisions.

Don't worry, we'll keep you in the loop.

While we decide, Per, Tom and Greg went to the Super Rallycross at Ivor Wigham's European Rally School on Saturday. The Neon was doing very well with Greg and Per solidly in the front of Stock Front Wheel Drive when Per miscalculated a bit, putting the Neon into a dirt embankment. The damage was limited to a scraped up front bumper and a punctured oil filter which ended our day. $3.47 later, we were buttoned back up and on our way home. 

Shifting Gears Jul 9, 2008

Looks like our NYG-scraping days may be coming to an end. The tires that came on this car were both flat and worn, so we replaced them with a set of XXR 02s from Edge Racing The XXRs weigh about 14 pounds-not bad for a 15x7! We needed to use these McGard lug nuts to make the XXRs work. They're super-strong and will stand up to weekly use. The seats are quite clean under the butterfly motif seat covers--but the steering wheel looks like a schnauzer chewed it.

During a recent trip to a local Bosch repair facility here in town, we stumbled upon an engine-less 1996 Neon ACR. We purchased the car for $500 (the transmission alone is worth half that!) and we now have it in our possession.

This ACR is now our official GRM Neon project for several reasons:

  1. It's an ACR.
  2. It's already a stick shift.
  3. It doesn't have any rust.

And we've worked out a deal to sell the NYG Neon for $425 plus a bunch of engine parts, including a good short block, head and a Mopar ECU.

The new car is pretty dusty, but underneath that layer of crud, it appears to be quite clean. So far, we've put the new headlights from the previous car on this one and replaced the rims and tires. The new rolling stock is 15x7-inch XXR 02 wheels from Edge Racing and 195/50R15 Bridgestone RE01R tires. We'll be using the stock rims to mount up our rallycross tires.  

Neon ACR Progress Jul 28, 2008

The Neon's interior is pretty easy to work on. Our engine's bottom end is now cleaned up and ready to receive the cylinder head. The panels are mostly just plastic bits that snap in place.

We took a trip to our local junkyard and got new interior bits for the Neon. About $50 got us a new dash, door panels and console pieces to replace the parts that the car came with. They had been painted several times by previous owners--Neons and spray paint just seem to go together.

Our engine bits are also being looked over as the long block assembly begins. We've cleaned up the short block, replaced the water pump and now we're looking over the DOHC cylinder head. It appears as though the valves for No. 2 and No. 3 aren't sealing so well, so we'll probably go through the head before it gets put back together.

 

ACR Neon Engine Assembly Work Aug 18, 2008

The FelPro MLS set on the short block. Our freshened head gets bolted on. Starting to assemble the timing belt area. Here's the Moroso oil pan and baffle. We replaced the Moroso baffle with this Ishihara-Johnson one.

We worked on our Neon ACR's engine last night. In a trade deal for our NYG, we received a bottom end for our new project. It looked okay, but we weren't so sure about the head. We got it checked out, replaced several valves and had all of the seats reground.

Now that the head is back from the machine shop, we can start putting the engine together. We bolted the head to the block using a FelPro MLS gasket and started working on our oil pan situation. We're using a Moroso aluminum pan with an Ishihara-Johnson baffle and crank scraper.

 

Two-Wheel Drive! Aug 25, 2008

The install required new bearings. We also put new axle seals in the transmission. We farmed out the installation of the differential, but the work is pretty straightforward if following the factory service manual.

We installed a Quaife ATB performance differential from Autotech Driveline in our Neon ACR's transmission. The Quaife is one of the few limited slip differentials available for the Dodge's transaxle.

The Quaife set us back almost double what we paid for the car. On the other hand, it also doubled the amount of traction we'll get, plus it's got a lifetime warranty.

http://www.autotechdriveline.com  

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