08's 2.4 swapped 96 sedan

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08kgraves
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08's 2.4 swapped 96 sedan

Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:33 am

ok so i havent been on here as much as i used to once i started getting on the big .org more, along with other misillanious forms im on. but i still have the 97 christmas tree sedan. i scrapped the 96 coupe that was in my signature/ still is this second till i get this thread up and change it.

but anyways i did some trading with a guy i meant at the dragstrip even though he wasnt looking to get rid of the car. so here is my new to me car. 96 neon, all 99 R/T parts/interior with a 2000 stratus motor fitted in.

08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:36 am

ill start off by saying i did not build the car, so things are not the way i would have done it necessarily. meaning some things still need fixed that were kind of a hack job if you ask me. for some quick history i got the car from the person who bought the car off the original builder. so i am the third owner of the car since the 2.4 swap with the builder being the original owner. as far as i know everything done to the car was by the builder and the guy i got it from pretty much just drove the car, maintained it and about nothing else. i have been in contact with the original builder as well from time to time to answer questions and what not.


heres the link to it on the big forum. im just going to copy and paste the few post i have more or less.

http://forums.neons.org/viewtopic.php?f ... 2181f1d810



heres a copy of the add i found on craigslist awhile back with original pics as well.

Im selling my 1996 Dodge Neon 2.4 swap. The engine is out of a 2000 Dodge Stratus that had 70k on it. It was installed about three years ago, Ive put about 30k on it since then. It was my daily driver but needs tires, which I have just dont have the time to get them installed.....I went through the engine, It has all new gaskets and seals from the head to the oil pan, Srt timing set (tensioner, idler belt etc.) Balance shafts are removed, head was cut .035 to raise the comp. ratio. It has an AMM no 90 lower intake manifold, solid bobble strut, full prothane motor mounts all around. Egr has been removed and blocked off. New struts on the rear with Performance Driven High rate springs, (have new struts and springs for the front, never installed.) Battery has been relocated to the bumper. Runs good, shifts good, gets around 30 mpg. I ran it at the strip three years ago once I got it on the road. It ran high 14's with slicks. Just dont have time or money to put into it, Full R/t interior etc. There is rust starting to show through the primer, bodys a little rough. But it doesnt leak a drop of oil, Ive only ran Mobil 1 full sythetic through it.

1500 obo, I have extra parts to go with it if I get the right price. I have a set of Mickey Thompson et. slicks and a custom ordered Big tube kirk racing header.

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I gave him both of my dodge dakota's and sadly all my rc stuff but i now have the car ive been wanting. i wanted to switch to electric anyway since mine were all nitro so im not to overly bumbed. the one dakota was ready to drive and was a 94 extended cab short bed 2wd with 3.9L v6 and roughly 193,000 miles. the other was a 92 standard cab long bed 4x4 with 5.2L 318 v8 and 135,000 ish miles. the 4x4 has a rusted out body, the 2wd has a rusted out frame. and the 4x4 needs an ignition relay, and a freeze plug. then the rc's were my 4907 T-Maxx built for racing, and my slayer pro 4x4 which was mostly stock.



here are some pics of the car as it sat when i brought it home.

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to be continued

08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:38 am

continued

yes the dial in time says 16.1 but that was when the other guy had it and the car refused to run consistant what so ever. so i thought i would point that out quick. the car wouldnt rev past about 4k for some reason which will be answered in a later post that i already fixed.

more pics
rt interior

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missing radio, which thankfully the harness was not cut. just adapter kit cut from cd player itself.

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even got the magnet off the guy lol

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look at the slicks i got with it.

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anyone know what kind of wheels these are?

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22x8x15 mickey thompson e/t slicks

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some underhood pics

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venem energy bottle for overflow

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amm no 90 lower intake

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to be continued

08kgraves
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Posts: 290
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:48 pm
Location: north central ohio

Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:39 am

continued

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battery behind the bumper which is good for weight distribution, not so good when it dies though lol

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stratus gas tank and fuel pump the second owner got when the car wouldnt run right (not reving up) not knowing that it wouldnt work at all lol

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spare coil to.

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front struts and springs athat still need installed. rears already on though

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to be continued

08kgraves
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Posts: 290
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:48 pm
Location: north central ohio

Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:40 am

continued

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the only 2 working speakers lol

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ok now heres where i start getting into the car myself lol

i ran the car at the drag strip and the car was absolutely all over the board as far as consistany goes. after a few passes i put a fuel pressure gauge on car. turns out at idle i have 49-50 psi and it stays that way just off idle as well. but if you crack the gas or rev the car in any way shape or form really then the fuel pressure would just start dropping off the chart horribly. so i got lucky being that the base of the car was a 96 and it has the steel gas tank with external fuel filter. well $23 later for a good wix filter and the car magically runs right and doesnt drop pressure anymore! no pics of the fuel filter but same day i did a fresh oil change with wix filter and mobil 1 oil.

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I also forgot to mention that the shell of car is 96, the motor is from a 2000 stratus, and everything else is from a 99 RT neon including the pcm, and the 5 speed transmission.

I quickly decided that the car being primer grey with a black front clip and a black rear bumper was very annoying lol. its only rattle can but the car has some rust and dents anyway so im not going for perfect by far. winshield needs replaced to.

some sanding

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i found out i should have sanded it all first then painted so i dint have to worry about overspray and such lol

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to be continued

08kgraves
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Posts: 290
Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:48 pm
Location: north central ohio

Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:41 am

continued

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thought it was going to start raining so i covered the freshest paint lol. only option i had to try and help....... it never did rain though

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never did the trunk yet cus there is a twist in the trunk and im just going to replace the lid.

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yeah i should have covered windshield way way better............... lesson learned when i had to scrape it off lol

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to be continued

08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:43 am

continued

if i remember right i went to junk yard to look for a decent trunk lid. but they changed there hours on sat and i walked in about 5 minutes before they now closed. i happend to look over on there table and seen some projector headlights with turn signals as well. i thought hmm those look like they fit a neon. so i walk over and pick one up to look at. on the bottom it says 99 neon. so after finding out they only wanted $50 i went home with them instead of a trunk lid. lol

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to be continued

08kgraves
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Joined: Fri Aug 05, 2011 10:48 pm
Location: north central ohio

Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:44 am

continued

fresh out of the car wash (new headlights not installed yet sadly)

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old lights

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new lights in and looking good

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these are last pics i have uploaded to photobucket account right now. but since then i have picked up some other parts that still need installed body wise. i have a clean passenger fender, a clean drivers fender if i can bend the mounting tabs back to where the should be........ otherwise i have to try and remove dents from one on car. i also got another front bumper with fog light holes and foam support for free. got rear bumper foam for free as well (both mine are missing). and got both the inner wheel well covers since mine are missing. got another trunk lid as well but it had the stock wing so i gotta weld the holes shut as well as repair a small dent above the lock. and i cant decide if i want to shave the third brake light or not.....................

input?

otherwise ive just kind of drove the car and raced it on and off locally. and of course put some punks to shame that they thought were hot stuff lol. best i myself have run in the car is a 15.6 spinning bad on the 175 width front wheels lol. but as far as the high 14 mentioned in the craigslist add the original builder of the car sent me a picture of the time slip. it ran a 14.7 something.

lets see... what else? oh the heater core went out on me and i bypassed it for the time being, once in awhile the battery light will come on and for codes it says that the battery is being over charged????

is the cus of the under drive pully? or because of the voltage regulator? where is the voltage regulator on this car? is it in the alternator? or the pcm?

i had to fix the alternator brackets as well. well more like replace them i should say. the upper one broke the small section on bottom side that the pinch bolt sits on. the lower one was well........... ghetto rigged for some reason. the two mounts that are side by side that go into block were just cut off completely, then the lower one that attaches to the ear coming off the block had the wrong size bolt in it, so they cut an ear off the inside so they could run a smaller but and bolt through it. well all this caused it to have 2 pivot points basically and physically make it impossible to have a correct pully angle. they were the correct pt cruiser brackets to which is why i dont understand why they cut it up and rigged it all. but i had to tap all 3 lower bracket mounts again. but in the end i fixed it lol. then just recently the battery was dead so im wondering if it was just a bad battery or if the overcharge thing cooked the battery........ so i need to look into that more.

08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:45 am

heres some more pics i uploaded the other day

a little rain pic of the headlights

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like my awesome broken alternator bracket? upper

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new unbroken upper bracket, along with the missing tention bolt

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and this is why it was breaking. you can see where someone cut the one lower ear off for the alternator pivot as well as the other 2 mounts that go on the block next to eachother. and with the one hole they left they used the wrong size bolt and put a nut on the back. no wonder things were breaking lol

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another pic of the upper bracket

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i didnt take a pic of the new lower bracket side by side to the one that was on my car but i should have. i was just in a hurry to get my car running at that point lol




but heres a pic of the time slip for the car right after it was built on slicks. ran a 14.757

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08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Tue Oct 16, 2012 6:49 am

shouldnt my car be faster thread

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=398189

08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Wed Oct 17, 2012 7:04 am

so ive had a few weird issues with the car since i got it that im still trying to figure out. so if anyone has any input please chime in.

the first being a weird hot weather running issue. only happens when its upper 80's or hotter outside. car will run for about 20 minutes then start loosing power and bogging to the point where it wont even come off idle. nothing you do while driving makes any difference at all and it will eventually get bad enough that the car will shut off on me. only happens when its hot out. any ideas towards this?






the next big thing is some type of charging issue or a big parasidic draw. only messed with this a little so far but all i gathered is that once in awhile my battery light will come on and it says that im overcharging the battery. i have no volt gauge on dash to verify this yet but plan on getting one. all i know right now is that at idle the voltage is at 13.9V everywhere i test it. not even finding any voltage drop from wire to wire. so only real guess is that voltage regulator in alternaotor went bad, causing battery to be overcharged, which in turn cooked my battery to death more or less.

oh ill add that the overcharge light only comes on when on the highway. thoughts anyone?



and on a side note a kid down the road kept talking about how awesome his 4.6L thunderbird was until i took him for a ride in my car when he said he felt like crap cus i would have left him at the starting line lol.

and to top it off i raced his buddy a while back in my almost stock 97 with a 3.0 intake and a coil and almost beat his cobalt ss. well he told his buddy about this neon and hes scared to come down here and accept his loss lol

08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Fri Oct 19, 2012 3:57 am

ok so who like how i have to jump start my car? lol could do it easier but i get best connection here and bumper was only zip tied right now

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since ive been having charging issues with my battery i decided it was time to pull it out. from what im gathering the alternator is putting out 13.9V at idle and thats at the battery so unless its getting overcharged then my problem is the battery. since fully charged is 12.6V (2.1V per cell (6 cells)) and anything up to 15.4 is technically safe but anything over 14.7V worries me 13.9 charge rate should be perfect and not have any issue. well im thinking i may have a dead cell in my battery because i keep getting a random overcharge light sometimes (only when going down the highway) and my battery is now dying over night. when i took it out the other day it was at 10.35V so if it was just a dropped cell it would go from 12.6 down to 10.5V and a dead cell could easily be pulling it down to the 10.35V

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also i noticed before my battery was moving around more then i felt safe with. so i wanted to go through and redo my mount for the relocation. but here is how it is right now. i still need to get pics of it off the car.

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also decided it was time to yank off the beat up fender to fit the junk yard one i picked up awhile back. need pics of the fitment as is and the two mounting tabs in the doorjam are bent and need straitened. also the clips are missing to hold bolts in for these two locations.

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i will try and get more pics up as soon as possible of the battery tray off and stuff.

FER24NEON
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Post by FER24NEON » Fri Oct 19, 2012 11:57 am

Awesome build! i love it! I just read the whole thread.
1996 Neon 2.4 swap
1981 Chevy C10 355

08kgraves
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Post by 08kgraves » Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:29 pm

thanks man, i decide it was time to post it up here as well. hmmmm i think i should go try to exchange that battery now that i think about it.

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1genRTturbo
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Post by 1genRTturbo » Fri Oct 19, 2012 12:54 pm

doesnt look too bad man. lovin the lights. i want to do that battery conversion to my car, i think it'd be sweet.
It's not the fall that hurts, it's the sudden stop at the bottom!

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