1gn Neon SRT-4 Swap for RallyX

Okay, picturefied update time!

First off, here's the SRT-4 throttle body I got the other day:

The PT Cruiser TPS mounts in a different orientation so even though the bolts line up and it will actually install, the little tab there won't actually engage the sensor. I suppose I could have tried to open it up and make it work, but that seemed like a lot of work. Instead of that, I went to the junkyard and pulled a TPS from a 2000 Caravan 3.3L which appears to properly interchange. About $15 after taxes and entry fee, so yay!

The PT Cruiser IAC is set in place there and it appears to fit. There's only one bolt hole in the sensor, but I think it'll get the job done. The IAC is an SRT-4 only part, so finding one in the junkyard is going to be pretty tough, so rather than spend the $70 on a new one we'll try this first.

Starting out, the manifold was pretty nasty.

After a bath with the Purple Power and a wire brush, I was left with a cleaned up version:

There was a bunch of goo on the mating surface, and it's a little roughed up, but hopefully it won't be too much damage to get a good seal.

I got it all masked up

And then it was time to put these guys to work:

Primer on:

And painted:

The spacer piece and the throttle body itself will remain unfinished, I think. I'm not sure if I'm going to put the original MAP sensor back in or if I'm just going to make a block-off plate for it. The only MAP sensor I need is the one that's already in MegaSquirt, so there's no need for it, but it would make a very easy and cheap block-off plate, so I'll probably just put it back in.

On a side note, I was out driving the car around today a bit to go pick up the paint and a couple other things I needed for around the house. It kind of hit me that I think I have yet to actually push the throttle pedal all the way to the floor, other than when I'm already in 5th gear passing someone on the highway. With the leak fixed and the rattling and knocking gone from the suspension -- and with a fresh car wash! -- it is really nice to drive. There are still some weird points in the tune that I need to address, but the overall response is just great, the sound is awesome, and I love how the blue vinyl looks. What's better than that, though, is that I'm finally to a point with this car where when I add a new modification like this, my concern for how it performs is actually equal to my concern for how it looks!

I'm going to have to be careful here, because I've actually caught myself wondering if I should go get a beater to use for RallyX!

The design of that intake manifold is so beautiful that I'm probably going to look for SRT4s tomorrow.

Wait till you see it with some satin finish stainless bolts and the chrome fuel rail!

The good hardware stores are all closed on Sundays so I tried to go to Ace and get some stainless and/or chrome hardware. It was pretty much a bust. They had chrome hex key button bolts that would have worked for the 5 intake manifold bolts, but they wanted something like $3.29 each for them, and it didn't seem worth it. I think that a stainless flange head hex cap bolt is what I want, and they didn't have anything like that. I did, however, score a couple chrome bolts for the fuel rail and one of the long bolts that I need for the throttle body attachment.

Davenport Racing USA never accepted my PayPal payment, didn't respond to email, and their phone number is disconnected. I'm assuming that they are no longer a going concern, and I'm not getting my HotBits so I cancelled my PayPal payment and appear to be out absolutely nothing except a week's time of waiting.

I reached out to AMR Engineering last night and they seem to respond to email and actually know some things. I've heard some horror stories of people not getting product for really long amounts of time, but I've also heard that when the product does show up it's a quality thing.

I will probably go ahead and order those up but first I need to figure out what spring sizes and rates I need.

Rather than waste time at a hardware store, look up McMaster Carr. They have any hardware you can think of. Use care when selecting stainless, it is a softer metal and is more easily stripped with a tool.

Yeah... But I have to wait if I order from McMaster!

Actually, that's really good advice. I always forget that they can get me basically anything I can imagine.

The order is placed for the new suspension. Front and rear adjustable dampers with 2.5" diameter springs and camber top mounts for the front. He's telling me it'll be 2-3 weeks before they ship, so in the meantime, I've got other stuff to do.

Starting out tonight was this mess:

The 2.0 intake manifold came off and I cleaned up the RTV that was previously used to seal things up.

At this point, there are no gaskets in place, I just wanted to test-fit and see what problems I'm going to run in to. I like the way it looks, though:

I've got a lot of clearance problems, though. The radiator inlet is rather unfortunately positioned:

And with that manifold in place, I only have about 2.5" of clearance behind the radiator so the original fans aren't going to fit. I've mocked up leaning the radiator forward to get that 2.5" of space and that gives me a somewhat suboptimal, but maybe passable amount of clearance for the radiator hose. I think that the original throttle cable just might be long enough, so that's good news. There isn't much clearance between the throttle lever and the transmission, but there is just enough to make it work.

What I need to figure out is moving the radiator forward, getting a slim fan to replace the existing ones, and then coming up with a new pipe to go from the intercooler to the throttle body. I'll also take the opportunity to re-run and clean up the wiring a bit, since it's an ugly mess.

Long day. Super tired. Measured the radiator and ordered up 2 slim 10" fans to replace the original ones. They're the type that basically get zip-tied through the radiator and they should fit between the radiator and the intake manifold if I relocate the radiator forward just a hair.

Hmm. The 1gn water filler neck has the wrong bolt holes and the PT turbo filler neck is too tall to fit under the hood. Looks like I have some research to do tonight and some hunting to do tomorrow morning at the junkyard.

The only other thing I accomplished was to clean up the bottom part of the water neck and bolt up the knock sensor to the block.

Huzzah for making forward progress!

Before we get to this evening's results, there are a couple other updates that I've been remiss in adding. First off, in addition to the suspension order, I've also placed my order to import some new dry weather tires. I have no idea how long that's going to take, but I'll keep an eye on that. I've also been shopping quick release steering wheel setups and new seats. I never plan to do anything that would require SFI or FIA certification/homologation with the car so I'm looking at some more budget one-piece options that would work for RallyCross and maybe an HPDE/PDX once in a while. I've found these seats on Amazon that ship as a pair with the appropriate bracketry for a Neon and then there are high-back seats from Jegs which I'd need to fabricate my own brackets for. I actually have no idea how easy or hard it would be to do that, so I need to dig in to that some more.

In an effort to tidy up the wiring, I picked up this self-fusing silicone tape and it's just amazing stuff! There's no adhesive on the tape, but once it touches itself it almost instantly fuses together. More on that in a bit.

This morning I got out the junkyard with eastsidemav and found a couple gems.

There's a super long throttle cable from an 01 or 02 Stratus, an upper water neck from the same car, a lower water neck from an 01 or 02 PT Cruiser, and over there on the right, I got a new cover for the PDC since mine broke and fell off at some point. Trying to make it look a little nicer, remember?

Here's the water neck bits all put together:

The PT upper is way too tall, the 2.0 upper doesn't fit, so the one from a Stratus is perfect. I probably could have used the PT turbo lower and made it work, but for some reason Chrysler moved the various ports around over the years. Here's the 05-06 lower that I already had next to the 01 lower that I got today:

You're looking at them from the bottom up as they would be mounted. The one on the left is the newer style. You can see that all the bosses are there, but for different applications and different years, they've drilled them differently. On the newer style, the CLT sensor bung is drilled into the left side which on my car would be a difficult fit due to the low pressure power steering line. The 01 PT Cruiser lower on the right, however, has the heater core output in the right spot and has the CLT sensor bung pointed towards the front where the wiring won't be rubbing against anything.

The CLT sensor itself was different since I believe the newer cars used a single sensor and then fed the gauge cluster as an output from the ECU while mine is set up to have two sensors in one so the ECU (now MegaSquirt) and the gauge can each get their own signal. I swapped out the sensors so everything should continue to work the way it did before.

Here it is, all bolted up:

With the water neck sorted, I went ahead and got the intake manifold bolted up. I'm loving the way it looks:

I trimmed down the radiator hose to prevent it from rubbing against the intake, and I went ahead and started wrapping the wires. I had to extend the CLT sensor wires since the sensor has moved a bit. I also pulled the little fuel line locking clip off of the old DOHC fuel rail and put it on the new chrome one. The silicone wrap for the wiring really comes out looking a lot nicer and cleaner than the old split loom that I was using before:

Compare that to how the old setup looked:

More solid progress today along with a slight disappointment.

The pair of slim-line cooling fans arrived. I was hoping to just use the zip-tie method to attach them directly to the radiator and then just deal with the wiring. Unfortunately, the little plastic parts are complete garbage and every single one of them broke through just the act of trying to push the zip tie through.

So instead of doing it that way, I'm working on fabricating mounting brackets from some leftover steel bits I've got laying about. The bottom of the radiator has slots for the fans to slide in to and then there are two bolt holes at the top of the radiator for each fan. I'm going to make four brackets like the one below and bolt them to the fans to hold the bottom in place. Then I'll make a bracket that will go across the top with the fan bolted to the metal and then the bracket bolted to the radiator. It should work okay, but it's just more work that I didn't expect to have to do.

Here's one of the fans with the one lower bracket attached.

I did a little more organizing and wrapping of the wiring harness and I'm really liking the way it's turning out. The only way that it could look better is if it had that real tight protective weave sheath around it, but I'll take what I've got:

The TPS and IAC are installed in the throttle body and the throttle body is installed on the manifold. It's a tight fit, but it works:

One problem-that's-not-really-a-problem is that the TPS pin outs are slightly different. Orange should be the +5VREF, the black-blue should be sensor ground, and the purple-white should be the signal. The connector on the left is the connector that came with the TPS while the one on the right is the original DOHC one. Pins 1 and 3 are swapped. Rather than try to swap the pins, I'm going to cut off the DOHC connector and wire in the pigtail from the Caravan that donated the TPS, and that works out well because with the new position, the old connector doesn't quite reach.

With the new position of the throttle body comes a need for a new cold side pipe. The IAT sensor needs to be installed in that tube yet, but the old section of silicone piping that used to be on the air filter just happens to be a perfect fit! It's actually a piece of the hot side pipe from a PT Cruiser - I tend to collect those when I see turbo PTs in junkyards since it's the right size and material and super cheap.

The throttle cable is definitely not long enough so I'll need to install the one from the Stratus. I'm working the wiring back and it's starting to look much cleaner. The upper radiator hose is resting against the hump for the MAP sensor, so I need to do something about that still. Hopefully tomorrow night will be spent finishing up some brackets - I need to get the cooling fan brackets made as well as make a bracket for the throttle cable.

This is going to look so cool covered in mud.

Bracketization inspiration:

A word of warning, those fans suck. A fan needs to be shrouded and the distance from the fan blades to the core needs to be at least an inch, preferably one entire hub-diameter, otherwise the fan only pulls from the area described by the blades. That means your effective useful radiator core area is the area described by the blades. Not good.

Yes, I realize you have some major space constraints. However, I give you this information from years of failing to cool engines down and what I've learned needs to be done.

In reply to Knurled:

Yeah, I am pretty concerned about that. The lack of space is killing me here, but what I may try to do is redrill the core support to push the radiator forward; I think I can get about another 3/4" by doing that. I'll look at that tonight and see what my options are.

Would I be going down the right path if I were to build a solid panel that would cover the back side of the radiator, offset from the fins by about an inch, with holes for the fans? I'm thinking a sheet of ABS plastic, maybe. Possibly aluminum.

Pictureless update tonight because there's not much to see.

Setting the fans aside for the time being, I went ahead and lengthened the TPS wiring and the IAT wiring (almost. I ran out of butt connectors with one splice left to go) and get that taped up along with the IAC wire. It makes a nice little branch of the harness and I'm pretty pleased with how the wiring is shaping up.

The Stratus throttle cable isn't just a little bit longer -- it's nearly twice as long as the 1gn Neon cable. Getting it through the firewall was a bit difficult because the grommet is significantly larger as well. Shaving down the rubber allowed it to fit snugly and the little clip on the inside will make sure it doesn't come loose. On the other side, I fiddled with the 1gn bracket for a bit and wound up cutting it up so that I've got a small square that has the keyed hole for the throttle cable to lock into place. I've got some small angle steel that I'll weld to it, drill a couple holes in, and mount to the throttle body's original bracket mount holes.

Jerry wrote: This is going to look so cool covered in mud.

The last time I was out driving around in the car I caught myself thinking that I could go out and get an old Honda or something to use as a Rallycross beater so I wouldn't get my Neon all dirty..

I was thinking that as well. I had been working on my MR2 for awhile now cleaning and painting many things as I came across them. I did my first rallyx this last weekend. Everything and I mean everything under the engine cover is now gray. The black valvecovers, gray. The red air filter, gray. The burgundy engine block, gray. The silver exhaust manifold, gray. I need to take a pic and add it to my build thread.

wae wrote: In reply to Knurled: Yeah, I am pretty concerned about that. The lack of space is killing me here, but what I may try to do is redrill the core support to push the radiator forward; I think I can get about another 3/4" by doing that. I'll look at that tonight and see what my options are. Would I be going down the right path if I were to build a solid panel that would cover the back side of the radiator, offset from the fins by about an inch, with holes for the fans? I'm thinking a sheet of ABS plastic, maybe. Possibly aluminum.

Well, at some point you gotta stop theorizing and start somewhere, so you may as well start with what you got and see how well it works.

Shrouding the fans without moving the fans back away from the radiator just ensures that no air at all will move through the shrouded part.

Redrill the core support? Since the car already has hood pins, I'd be thinking of cutting it out entirely and laying the radiator down more like the WRC cars would have. Some of them had the radiator practically flat to the ground. That'd be if it didn't work thisaway, of course.

In reply to Knurled:

Looking at it tonight, I could get about 3/4" of space between the radiator and the fan blades if I made a shroud. Cutting up the core support, though, is a very interesting idea. If I just took out the vertical bracing, I could lean it several degrees and get plenty of space to work with. Seems a little bit extreme, though. Guess I'll see if I have a problem before I try to fix it, huh?

Maniac0301 wrote: I was thinking that as well. I had been working on my MR2 for awhile now cleaning and painting many things as I came across them. I did my first rallyx this last weekend. Everything and I mean everything under the engine cover is now gray. The black valvecovers, gray. The red air filter, gray. The burgundy engine block, gray. The silver exhaust manifold, gray. I need to take a pic and add it to my build thread.

Gray? I was hoping you'd use some more of that blue that you put on the steering bracket!

In reply to wae:

The gray color wasn't a design decision it was just what happened to my engine bay after my first rallycross.

Been busy with work, been busy helping critique a friend's manuscript, went for two days without power, so I haven't gotten much done. But my tires were shipped on the first of March, so I should see them sometime soon, and I got word tonight from Andy at AMR Engineering that he expects to be able to ship out my suspension late next week or early the week after that. Exciting times!

This just in:

SG1?