Page 1: Project Log | Page 2: Links | Page 3: Ideas and Plans

 

Project Log

This is my project log for my 1997 Plymouth Neon. First, a few things about my car... first of all, it's a daily driver, and I'm not a huge mechanics expert, so there will be no major crazy modifications going on here. I don't have a huge amount of money to spend on this, so I'll be doing things gradually. And the last thing I've decided is that no matter what I do to the car, I'm going to keep the option of putting it back to stock. So whenever I've replaced something with an aftermarket part, I'm keeping the stock one. And whenever I want to modify or paint a stock part, I go to the junkyard and grab a duplicate. This is just in case I ever want to put the car back to stock for some reason, and also in case I make a mistake or screw something up or don't like the end result.

If you have any comments or suggestions, by all means, please let me know. I'm always looking for help and advice, I'm not a pro!

And I'd be nowhere without neons.org and neoncanada.com so thank you to everyone on those sites for posting info, guides, how-to's, and answering all my stupid questions.

 

11.16.09:

Ok... I know it's been a LONG time since I updated this. I've done a few things to the car since last winter but I've been busy with school (now in university) and other stuff and I forgot about taking photos and posting everything. Here's what's happened...

• Trailer hitch receiver - found at junkyard, spent an hour trying to unbolt, bought, re-painted, ordered new bolts, installed one day before first use at the Agincourt Hike for Hunger (scouting-related food drive parade) where I towed a trailer full of donated food. Had a class 1 hitch tongue and ball setup left over from our Caravan that we sold when we bought the Durango, which is class 4, so I didn't need to spend extra money on that.
• Muffler. Someone on NeonCanada posted about a few Ractive mufflers he had. I bought one and put it on. Nice deep sound, not too loud, no ricer-fart-can buzz. All stainless dual outlet with 4" tips. Only thing is, sometimes one tip rattles against the trailer hitch and makes noise. Oh well.
• I blew a tire (one of my factory-original, 12-year-old tires - yep, still going until this) in August, so I finally got around to buying some new tires and putting them on those AR24 rims and putting those on. Soon they will be coming off in favour of winter tires on the stock wheels.
• Replaced previously mentioned broken headlight and body shop fixed the fender. Covered by insurance.
• Now, a big one. I bought, from various places on the internet, all the parts necessary to build an in-car computer. I have a 7" touchscreen mounted on the dash, and the actual computer is mounted under the driver's seat. Dual-core Intel Atom, 120GB HDD out of my old laptop, runs Centrafuse on Windows XP Pro and runs GPS, Bluetooth phone, music through the stereo, and OBD2 once I get around to setting it up.
• Bought some fog lights. Haven't gotten around to installing them yet. Probably will wetsand first.
• Pioneer amp under the passenger seat, 800W sub in the trunk.

Plans for now are to get the fog lights in and that's pretty much it before winter hits.

02.12.09:

WTF!!!! X2!!

Just noticed today, my passenger side headlight seemed to be vibrating while I was driving. Popped the hood when I got home, and what do you know. The ice hit the fender hard enough that the fender pushed in on the headlight and snapped off part of the mounting bracket. Dammit. 

My father is going to see if our condominium corporation will pay for the damage because suposedly they neglected to keep the roofs free of dangerous ice. I know it sounds stupid. But hey. At least it hit my car and not my head. Seriously... if something that big and heavy were to fall on someone, it could kill them, no exaggeration.

 

02.11.09:

WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111

Stupid weather. 

So it's been really cold (typical winter-ish) mostly, but lately it's been warming up a lot and today it's raining. The cold made a whole bunch of ice build up on the roof, and today as I was working on wiring up the harness for the fog light switch, I head a really loud crash outside. I go out to the porch and there are massive chunks of 6" thick ice all over the ground. The passenger side fender (which had already been slightly damaged and badly repaired by me) is all dented in. 

 

However, I'm very lucky compared to my neighbour... most of the ice hit his Jeep...

 

 

02.10.09:

I retract my statement from January 20th. I found (and bought, of course) a white fog light bumper at the junkyard. And I grabbed the switches and everything too. Unfortunately, I couldn't get the actual fog lights off the car. They are put on with a round-head bolt, and the nuts were rusted solid on both sides, so the bolts just spin. I'll probably end up buying some PIAAs or Depo ones or something from Modernperformance.

[photo goes here]

Also, I found a glove box light. Required me to splice into the dash wiring, which I was a bit nervous about, but it all worked out.

[photo goes here]

 

02.08.09:

Found this photo of a door panel and played around with Photoshop. This is how they (hopefully) will look when they're done.

 

01.26.09:

Went to the junkyard again today. Still no white fog bumpers. Picked up a set of pillar covers, a set of door lock tabs, a set of window cranks, and a set of the upholstered trim pieces on the door panels. All those plastic bits will be painted white. I recovered the upholstered pieces with some white fabric that was on sale at Fabricland for $2 for a meter. They turned out pretty nice.

 

01.25.09:

RIMS!

Thanks to whoever posted the Kijiji link on neoncanada.com, the thread is deleted now and I don't remember who you are. 

American Racing AR-24's. $225 including the seemingly hard-to-find plastic center caps, and a set of lug nuts, and the tires. These rims seem to be popular with Neon people. I like the looks of them, especially the subtle black on the inside edges of the spokes. They won't be going on until spring. This is the photo the guy took of them for the listing, I'm too lazy to take another one. And the lug nuts he gave me were slightly rusty, and I can't have that. Rotary tool + polishing compund + lots of time = solution.

 

01.24.09:

Found a guide on neons.org that shows how to wire the separate bulbs of the Depo headlights with a relay so that the low beams stay on when I turn on the highs. I made a plug-n-play wiring harness out of an extra stock headlight plug and a cut up 9007 bulb so that I wouldn't have to cut any of the wires on the car. It works great. Unfortuantely, it wasn't designed by someone whose car has daytime running lights. The DRLs put out half voltage to the high beams, and this makes the relay go crazy and all the lights flicker. So I posted this up on a few different electronics forums, and I got a bunch of different answers. Including someone with a really ridiculously transistor and PC-chip based voltage sensor. But the simplest (and cheapest) by far is, someone said to just put a 12V Zener diode in front of the coil of the relay, that will stop the voltage from reaching it unless it is a full 12V or more. I went to the electronics store today, but I arrived 6 minutes after they had closed. I'll be going again on Monday so stay tuned.

 

01.20.09:

Why are there no white fog bumpers in the junkyard? 3 rows of Neons... plenty of white ones... and plenty of non-white ones with fog bumpers... and local paintshop wants $200 to paint one white. And yes, they do exist.

Argh.

 

01.09.09:

Headlights are in! Wasn't too difficult, with the exception of the bolts that were behind the fender. Solution: stick the socket extension through the headlight gasket and blindly feel around for the bolt. Then once the bolt is loose, get down on the ground and reach up from under the car and turn it out with your fingers. I ended up ripping the gasket off.

I didn't experience any of the breakage problems that many people seem to have with these Depo lights. I guess I got a lucky pair. I haven't got them properly aimed yet, I'm not sure where I'll be able to do that.

Anyway. Here it is. Grille piece is painted and installed as well.

Ugly Neon                                                    Blind Neon

Pretty Neon                                                 It's Alive!

Since I had the headlights out anyway, I figured it was a good time to do some underhood cleaning. Note to self: Goo Gone freezes and becomes very hard to remove if you wait for the length of time that it says on the bottle. In Canadian winter. Solved with a bucket of hot water. Actually it worked pretty well... Goo Gone on, let it freeze, and wipe off with a hot water soaked rag. Effective.

 

Before (old photo but you get the idea)

After

 

01.07.09:

Yay. Headlights are here. Picked them up at the post office. Had to wait about half an hour because first there was some woman who was trying to send about twenty letters to the Philipines, and she couldn't figure out why she couldn't use one single normal Canadian local mail stamp on each one. Then the worker scared me a bit when she said she couldn't find the package. She came out about 10 minutes later with it. Not sure when I'll have both time and good weather at the same time though.

And here's a shot of them mocked up with the eBay turn signals.

 

 

01.06.09 x2:

Oops. They actually did try to deliver the headlights today. Found the Canada Post card wedged in the mail slot. They shall be picked up tomorrow.

In other news:

 

01.06.09:

Yay! eBay stuff came. Still waiting for the headlights to put in the turn signals. I'll solder up the harness now...

 

01.02.09:

Dissapointed. None of the parts I'm expecting have arived yet. Maybe it was a bit much to expect the headlights and turn signals, but I expected at least that the wiring harness for the JVC deck would have come by now.

Oh well. I have homework to do anyway.

 

12.28.08:

Leaving tomorrow morning for skiing in Vermont. Put the car in my friend's garage for the week to give it a chance to dry out after all this snow. And rain. I'll be back on the 3rd. Hopefully by then the headlights, turn signals, and JVC wiring harness will all have arrived and I'll have something to do.

 

12.27.08:

Ordered the previously mentioned black turn signals. I'm impressed, got shipping confirmation and a tracking number about 3 hours after I paid for it. Good seller.

 

12.26.08:

So I got bored today... I decided to sell the Pioneer radio that I found in the junkyard. So I wanted to test it to make sure it's working properly. And of course, the only way to do this is to put it in the car. So I stuck it in and what do you know, works great. Bolts up and plugs in no problem at all since it was already in a Neon, it has the faceplate and everything. I decided to leave it in until I get the wiring for the JVC.

 

12.25.08:

Christmas money! Yay! Ordered some of these Depo Projector headlights from Modern Performance. Planning to get these black turn signals (~$15, eBay) and use the black grille piece to complete the look.

 

12.24.08:

So I took the car for a ride today with the new cluster in it, and brought my GPS so I could see how accurate the speedo is (the old one was always showing faster than actual speed). Unfortunately, it was rather futile, because the speedo didn't work at all. Obviously I didn't notice when I put it in because I only started it in my driveway. So I took it back out, took it back apart, and reflowed the solder in the connections (I read about this on neons.org when some other people were having similar problems). And voilà, it works perfectly.

 

12.23.08:

Hit up the junkyard today with my friend. He picked up some bucket seats for his van... lol? He just killed his 97 Cavalier (somehow didn't notice that it was running on 2 cylinders for a month...??) so now he's fixing up his 98 Plymouth Voyager. I got a bunch of odds and ends, an extra lisence plate holder which I intend to spray black (faded stock grey = ugly), a grille piece (blue because I couldn't find black, of the 3 black Neons in the yard, none of them had front ends). I have to get black spray paint anyway for the plate holder, so whatever. And I happened to find a fresh-to-the-yard R/T with an aftermarket Pioneer CD deck. Nothing fancy, but what I really wanted was the Chrysler end of the wiring harness. I took the whole thing anyway... why not? They didn't even charge me... cool! The other thing I got from this R/T was a tach cluster. Now I can see my RPMs! Yay! I took both my original one and this new one apart to swap the odometers.

 

12.17.08:

Picked up a used JVC KD-AVX2 DVD deck from a guy on Kijijijijiji today, $300. Will be going in soon, waiting on a wiring harness from eBay.

 

12.12.08:

Tried to piece together my 3.0L cold air intake (click ) today. I have one of those 3.0 tubes from the junkyard and a 18" piece of 2.5" exhaust tubing from Canadian Tire, which I painted with the same rust paint as I used on the strut bar brackets (I'll be cutting it into two pieces). Also have a crappy used cone filter that I bought from someone on neons.org. Which, as I found out, is way too big to fit down in front of the battery tray and the rad mounts and the transmission. Damn. Whatever.. I need a better filter anyway for this to be of any use. Probably going to get a K&N straight cylinder filter, 3.5" diameter and 5" or 6" long. I have a second battery tray from the yard as well, which I hacked up a bit too much in an attempt to make it fit. So now my battery is held down by a spinal board strap. Hey, if it can hold down a kid's head, it can hold down a battery, right?

 

12.06.08:

The end brackets on the strut bar were black, faded, and a bit rusty, so I took them in to the shop in my school and ground them off (had to bring in my own angle grinder, just wanted to use thier vice). 3 coats of rust paint later, they look pretty damn good. It went in today:

And in case you're wondering... This photo was taken later, after I had attempted my 3.0L cold air intake install. That's why the battery is currently being held down by an old spinal board strap that I stole from the camp I worked at in the summer.

 

11.30.08:

Picked up more free stuff! Same guy messaged me again and told me he found more. A crappy 2nd gen Neon spoiler which is going straight to the "for sale" pile... but I also got a nice Vibrant front strut bar. Apparently it's a prototype, and not a final market version... so the chrome is peeling in a few places... whatever, it's free!

 

11.23.08:

Picked up a load of free parts from a guy that was clearing out his garage. Mostly stock stuff, which I've been selling, to make more money to buy more parts. Of course. But the one thing I'm going to use is a pair of rather nice seats from a 2002 Neon. They're black and much more comfy than my base model stockers. Unfortunately, they stink of smoke... $39 for shampooing at the dealership and a bottle of Simoniz odour remover, and they're good.

 

11.01.08:

Started my interior mods. Picked up a load of replacement dash bits at the junkyard. Planning on doing a white-on-black interior theme. Like this page.

The bag of stock parts is growing.

 

Page 1: Project Log | Page 2: Links | Page 3: Ideas and Plans