eastsidemav wrote: One other thought - you probably don't want the axles to be able to take more torque than the gearbox...
True statement! I'd be a lot more concerned if I were breaking things in a straight line. At that point it would probably be time to lower boost. And that's no fun!
I just got word that my new axles and hubs are finished and shipping out today. Unless they get held up in customs, I should have them by Friday!
Plenty of time to have them in for Saturday!
You know it! The only hard part is getting the hubs pressed out and back in.
Hell, show up by 9am, first car won't be out till 1030-11am, plenty of time Saturday morning.
Just got confirmation from UPS that the new axles and hubs are scheduled to arrive tomorrow by "end of day". After the exchange rate, it was about $740 shipped for the axles (which I'm told I am not capable of breaking) and the machining of the hubs. The hubs were another $130 or so for a grand total of about $870, shipped. That's actually less expensive than the kit from DSS purchased through Modern Performance and I've heard of DSS axles breaking and they only have a 1 year warranty.
Now I just need to impose upon eastsidemav to use his press on the hubs Friday!
(Oh, and get the knuckles off the car and all that stuff)
I was hesitant to start tearing things apart too far before I had confirmation from UPS -- I can find an axle if I need to and throw it in pretty quickly if the new kit wasn't going to show up. I may try to see if I can take the afternoon off work today and go out and pull the knuckles and axles and pick up new axle seals and more Syncromesh fluid. Tonight is Thursday, so that means it's Bingo night so I'll be tied up from about 1600-2300 so no car work. There's also a chance I may just go out to HF and buy a press myself just so my stupid schedule isn't inconveniencing everybody else.
I'm working from home tomorrow, and will be spending the evening getting ready for the rallyx, so no problem at all using the press pretty much anytime on Friday. Might be gone for a bit to grab lunch or breakfast, but other than that, I'll be around.
Northern Tool has this awesome folding work table that I got for Fathers' Day. It folds flat, comes with some nice clamps, and purports to have a 1,000 pound capacity. Since the car is over at the storage garage right now (I needed to dump it off the trailer in order to use the trailer to move some church festival things), I had to take my tools to the car. I popped the table up, arranged my tools on it, and it worked out perfectly:
From the time I rolled up to the time I had the tools arranged, the car in the air, and the knuckles and axles removed, it took about 35 minutes, which I thought was pretty good considering I didn't have any air- or electric-powered tools. It's amazing how good you can get at something when you've had to do it so many times. So now, in the back of my car I've got these:
The new axles and hubs are currently out for delivery, but UPS could get here anytime between now and 1700 or 1800 and I've got a 1500 meeting that I've got to be at. As soon as UPS does their job, I'll be off to a pressing appointment at eastsidemav's garage!
(haha! Get it? "Pressing"?)
I do think I have a new way to turn this hobby into a money maker, though. I'm going to start running odds on what catastrophic failure will befall me at the next Rallycross:
Overheating 4:1
Broken axle 7:1
Boost leak 2:1
Megasquirt electrical connection 3:2
Transmission 5:1
Connecting rod 4:1
Run out of gas 2:1
Hole in block 5:1
Debead tire 8:1
Other than debead tire failure 6:1
Place your bets!
Should be muddy, so a debead is unlikely. Id have to go with boost leak or transmission. 
I guess run out of gas or "other than debead tire failure."
I'm going to go with birdstrike.
It look longer than expected (gee, there's a shock), but the axles are in. I still need to top off the gearbox (forgot to bring the bottle of Syncromesh to the garage), but I'll do that tomorrow morning, put the front tires on, let it back down to the ground, and load it on the trailer. Hopefully I have enough Syncromesh on hand, it can be a little hard to find.
I'll take broken axle, connecting rod, Megasquirt electrical connection and hole in the block
I haven't run into a transmission that wasn't better off after a dose of GM Syncromesh.
I was going to take overheat, or Megasquirt issue. But you went ahead and finished the entire thing under your own power, and even drove it onto the trailer. Masel tov!
Thanks! When I crossed the timing trigger after my first run, I was banging my fist on the roof of the car and whooping and carrying on like a little kid. My morning times were pretty rough so I knew I had lot of work to do to find some time in the afternoon. It was close enough that I wasn't sure if I was in first or second at the end, but once I drove the car onto the trailer with no winch or tractor required but I still felt like I had won Monaco, Le Mans, and Indy all at once. I'm not one much for participation trophies, but in this case I really did feel like a winner just for participating in the whole event!
Getting the new axles in presented a couple small challenges. First of all - and most annoyingly - I'm pretty sure that the shop forgot to send me the wheel bearings I bought. Because the new outer joint shafts are half-dollar sized (ish) and the stock ones are quarter sized, they needed to machine the hubs. Rather than sending mine up, I figured I would just get new ones. I selected the more expensive Moog kits since they claimed to come with a wheel bearing, thinking that with the abuse I'm going to give it, I should be staying away from cruddy bearings that were hechoed en china.
When I opened the package on Friday evening, though, the axles, hubs, and wheel studs were all there, but no sign of bearings. Since these cars are getting up there in years, many parts are not stocked anymore, so the best I could do in short notice was to get a pair of OReilly house-brand bearings that were of course hechoed en china.
With that bridge crossed, eastsidemav lent me his expertise and his workshop for way longer than I should have needed to teach me how to use the press and how FWD wheel bearings work. It looks like HF has a coupon out there right now for a 20 ton floor press for $150 so that just might be the next addition to my basement. The hardest part about the job was finding the right blocks and the right size socket to support the knuckle and push on the hub and bearing. The first one took a while, the second one was removed and replaced in about 10 minutes. This is definitely one of those tools that I won't need for every job I do, but there is absolutely no substitute when you do need it.
Getting back to the axles, once we got the knuckles squared away, I took them back to the garage and got them installed. No clearance issues with the larger joints, and all the splines lined up perfectly. One issue I did run in to was that with the stiffer bushings and the taller and stiffer suspension, I could not get the knuckle re-installed to the bottom of the strut without disconnecting the sway bar end-links on both sides. That added a couple minutes to the process, but it wasn't too bad.
In the spirit of the GRM Challenge - it was a challenge car after all! - the test drive of the axle job was pulling out of the garage and on to the trailer. I got home from putting the axles in and got all my things arranged for the next morning so I could get to bed by 0200. I was up at 0530 to get the trailer hooked up, the GELÄNDEWAGEN loaded, and over to the garage to put in the fluid, bolt on the tires, pull out the jacket stands, and strap it down to the trailer.
As a slight aside, now that the thing is staying out of limp mode (cue furious wood knocking there), the GL350 is an amazing tow pig. Aside from the fact that it's super comfortable with a way oversized A/C system, the visibility is great and it just has so much grunt. The only downside is that because of the monocoque construction the trailer noises are telegraphed straight through to the otherwise serenely quiet cabin.
As for the Rallycross, the car acquitted itself admirably. I was down about 5 seconds on eastsidemav at lunch, but managed to crawl back enough time in the afternoon to win MF by a margin of only .754 seconds. In the interest of full disclosure, if OVR didn't drop a single run over the day, he would have beaten me by 2.9 seconds! In this case, however, the rules played to my favor for a finish that was first in class and third overall. Of the 10 Subaru that were at the event, I beat 9 of them. That's the beauty of front wheel drive, baby!
Being a Bill story, though, you know it isn't all sunshine and roses. While the car ran great, it was also running really hot. Like, spiking at 250 degrees hot. Like, overheating hot. The fans are shrouded and pushing good air and I was able to keep it under control by borrowing eastsidemav's garden sprayer and wetting down the radiator after each run, but it was a pretty cool day and even with the sprayer I was pushing about 240ish degrees. I'm out of room for a bigger radiator, I cannot physically fit a better fan in there, so I've got to figure a better option. On my brainstorming board, I've got additional radiator; custom magic radiator that works better; Mishimoto radiator; in-line tank for extra capacity; better shrouding; and hood vents. I'm thinking that my first attempt will be better shrouding coupled with hood vents.
All in all, though, I am so very pleased!
Have you done anything to duct the air coming into the radiator? Some coroplast panels and duct tape to direct the air into the radiator on the Miata is the difference between overheating and not.
In reply to EvanB:
You know, there really is not much in the way of ducting on the front end of a Neon. I also have a substantial amount of bumper between the cool, fresh air and the radiator. While I've got a good clean path to the intercooler, I could try to cardboard something up real fast and see if that helps. If it does, I've got a bunch of aluminum sheet that I could use to make something pretty.
It won't be the perfect solution, but could buy you some time if you switch out to a cooler thermostat. There's supposedly some mythical 160 degree thermostat that was made for racing neons ages ago, but I haven't found one yet.
Ducting to direct the air into the radiator is good, but also keep in mind if you can get the air pressure behind the radiator lower than in front, it'll pull air through quite well. That's the reasoning behind my airdam, and its basically a more extreme version of the factory one, of which I should have a spare laying around if you want to try it.
Sealing up the gaps around the radiator is critical, too, give the air less options for how to get through.
I have a few ideas regarding hot air extraction from under the hood, too, bit they'll be easier to explain in person.
I think I already have the lower temp thermostat installed. I'm pretty sure I just reused the one from the 2.0 when I put the 2.4T in and I had the 160 degree tstat in the 2.0.
I've been reading all the stuff about pulling air from under the hood and where the low pressure areas should be. I'm not adverse to the idea of using a fan on the hood to pull air out, either. I had initially raised the rear of the hood to help the heat from the turbo escape, but I'm wondering if that might be contributing to the problem since I believe that's a high pressure area, right?
Here's the other part that I find challenging: Temps were lower in the afternoon when I was going much faster and when I have it out on the road, cruising along at 35+ mph results in lower temps. At idle or on a slower course where I'm generating the same heat but not a lot of airflow, things getc too hot. I would think that if I had too much pressure behind the radiator there would be more of an issue at speed. Certainly if I can pull more air through the radiator through the use of the fans the temps should go down a bit, but it worries me that maybe the radiator just can't shed the amount of heat that the engine can create.
Hmm, in that case, more heat capacity in general, sealing up the gaps around the radiator, and maybe activating the fans at a lower temp would help. Venting the hood will help at least some while you're sitting in the grid, but probably not a ton while on course.
Maybe switching to distilled water and water wetter is a good idea, at least while temps are above freezing. IIRC, coolant doesn't have as much heat capacity as water.
The base of the windshield is a high pressure zone, but only when you are moving, so that's probably not causing a problem. Plus, the low pressure zone you are generally trying to create is under the car.
With the few minutes I had to spare before running out to pick up a kid from soccer practice, I went out and had a gander at how things are spaced. Some of that fancy aluminium tape should work to seal around the sides, but the top and the bottom are pretty tight already thanks to the shoehorning required to fit the SRT-4 intake manifold. Because I worship at the alter of cut first, measure maybe, there are a few new holes in the bumper cover. The first-gen Neon has a lot of bumper in the way of the radiator so perhaps opening that up a little bit will allow for some more flow. My thought on ducting is to put a panel over the intercooler but under the new ventilation holes with some sides that are contoured to the shape of the bumper cover. Since there's no structure behind the cover, there are plenty of opportunities for the air to go around to the sides, so I'll need to pull the bumper cover off so I can fashion some panels to force the air straight-on.
So it's been about three months since I've made an update here, but there's plenty to report.
The axles have been fine and the suspension and tires have been amazing. By turning the fans the correct way, ensuring that the radiator is filled using water and Hyper Cool, and having the shrouding installed, the temps are staying in range and that problem seems to be squared away.
The real problem, though, is keeping the motor installed in the car:
That is the 1st gen Stratus 2.4 motor mount. The astute among you will notice that despite being created as a single piece of aluminum, this mount is in three sections. It turns out that a three-piece motor mount bracket lacks the efficacy of the original single piece implementation.
I discovered this failure while on-course. The temps started rising rapidly, I was getting coolant on the windshield, and the brake pedal went right to the floor and did absolutely nothing to stop the car. Pulling off course, I found that the motor had shifted which cracked the plastic thermostat housing. Looking further, the lack of brakes was caused by the alternator pulley tearing through the front-right brake line. Going even further, though, I found this:
That is -- or more appropriately was -- a dogear in the block that one of the mount plate bolts was threaded through. When the plate sheared, the bolt tore that dogear out completely, but that appears to be the only permanent damage done.
I didn't have much time to work on it before the next event -- between having to make Edward Scissorhands props for my wife and then frying up 10,000 doughnuts for my church festival, I didn't have a whole lot of time to get things patched back together. After running to all three U-Pull yards in town, I scored a thermostat housing, another aluminum bracket from a former Cincinnati Bell Stratus, a new right-side mount and Prothane inserts from Amazon, and some brake line and a compression fitting from Advance. After a day's worth of actual work, everything was back together, the brakes were bled, and the car was running great again.
One hurdle that I really didn't have time or equipment to fix "right" was the torn dogear. I didn't want to go with just two bolts, so I cut up a bit of 1/8" steel and put some holes in it. I welded a nut to it and trimmed down the "foot" on the mount bracket to accommodate it and then bolted it through the power steering adapter plate (which is attached to the block with two or three larger bolts).
The very next morning, I took the RV with the car trailing behind up to the OVR 2-day rallycross event. The car started out really strong, but wound up overheating after the second run. Turns out, I didn't have enough water in the system and I forgot to turn on the fan, so I cooled it down and filled it up to make my third run. It ran great yet again, and I was feeling pretty good about things. I pulled off the start line for the fourth time, and didn't make it past the first turn when it died and wouldn't restart. At the lunch break, I did a little troubleshooting and found that the fuel pump fuse had blown and replacing it with one out of eastsidemav's car got the engine running perfectly again. The motor was rocking a bit, though, because the bolt for the lower-right engine mount strut had sheared. Our gracious host opened up Bolt Bazaar so I could go shopping for a new bolt and I was able to get that installed with no problems.
At that point, I was all ready to go back to racing but since I had a little time, I asked eastsidemav to come over and give me an opinion. As I was standing on the course after the car broke, I had some time to think about what was going on and I remembered that when I was putting things back together the day before, I had to put a ratchet strap on the engine to twist it forward so that the motor mount bolt would be able to thread. As I continued to think about it, I'm thinking that maybe I've got the motor rocked backwards too far, which is putting the bolt hole too far back and then the whole thing is under constant stress. My thought, and I what I wanted an opinion on was if it would make sense to go ahead and try to move the motor around there in the field. Before he could get over there, though, I noticed that the aluminum bracket was sheared again. It doesn't appear to be as bad as before, but it was enough to retire the car for the day.
I'm enjoying taking a couple days off not thrashing to get any projects moved forward, and I need to spend some time helping out with the Challenge trucklet, but in the meantime I'm kind of formulating a plan, assuming that the damage is as light as I think it is:
First, I want to support the motor so I can pull the side mount and the remains of the bracket out to let the engine find it's natural place. Then I'm going to unbolt the lower-right mount strut and the bobble strut so I can reposition the engine where I want it. I'll go get another mount bracket and get the motor bolted in - this time it shouldn't be under any torsional stress. Then I can go ahead and connect the bobble and the strut to eliminate the rocking of the engine. Finally, I'm going to put another strut on the front of the motor where the original engine would have had the front motor mount. The idea with all that is to have the motor mounted so that it doesn't move, but not have it preloaded.
One change I could make to that plan would be to use the steel front plate from the PT Cruiser 2.4 after I ground off the PS mounting bolts and drilled and tapped a new hole for the frame mount. I like having that aluminum bracket there, though, because I feel like it acts as more of a circuit breaker against doing any further damage to the block.
I have been involved with a few engine swaps in neons. The motor mount issue is a serious problem. Getting rid of preload is a good plan. Also, I think you should try to think about how to eliminate fatigue failure in the aluminum mounts as the damper in the original neon setup for the rear mount was not just for engine control but to also damp out some of the vibration to avoid fatigue failures at the other mounting points. The second gen neon uses the unidirectional engine mount at the top to try and control that motion. Even with the balance shafts the vibrations of the 2.4L plus the flexibility of the whole front engine box can create interesting harmonics. Getting all the engine parts perfectly balanced would help but is costly.
So if you intend to try and keep a rigid mounting system then try to replace the aluminum with steel replicas. Also not sure if you reinforced the lower radiator sheet metal but it isn't really that strong. Mine tore just form using a solid bobble strut replacement. I can't tell if your timing belt end is still using the rubber mount on the frame rail or a solid metal mount. If it is still the rubber mount, we found in two swaps that it just didn't like the vibrations from the 2.4L it would let the engine flop around at that end more than we desired. A new mount was the only solution way back then. Someone did once try a solid mount there but it snapped the bolt off. So the best solution I saw was using adding another mount similar to the 2nd gen torque arm at the top timing belt side of things.
Regarding the cooling, it sounds like a similar neon issue I had that was only solved by a new radiator. I chased if for a whole season. The neon radiators just got clogged up often and I decided to replace when they started acting up. Before that it helped also when I replaced the water pump. They can fail by having lowered efficiency rather than full on leaking.
I still think the combination of solid mounts and poly-inserts is causing an issue. Best to go with all one or the other. If you want, I still have a bucket of sand I used to help keep the urethane from outflowing when I filled the mounts on my car.
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