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Hey guys been a member here a while never really posted much though. So me and some friends at work were sitting around and talking about Top Gear and how much we really liked the episodes where they would go out and buy car with a budget, use the left over money for mods and do a set of challenges to see who had purchased the best car. With that in mind we decided to do some thing similar.

The rules we have agreed on are as follows: total budget is $1500. You must go out and buy your vehicle it can be any make and model as long as you do not exceed the price limit.
All things you use on your car is to be added into the total excluding the following: the transportation/equipment needed to get vehicle, taxes, registration, insurance, consumables(gas, oil, car soap,ect.), tools bought to work on car, any safety equipment( roll cages, helmets, fire extinguisers, ect.), and media recording devices such as gopro cameras and associated mounting hardware.

any parts and services you can get for free, able to provide yourself, or already have at the time of the competition is allow and you are not required to add to your total.

this challenge is focused on sportsmanship and having a good time so we leave it to the competitors discretion when it comes to the sportsmanship of things like free part/ services (example: getting a free fully built 383 to stuff in your geo metro might not be in the highest regards to sportsmanship)

the challenges: so far the time frame for the challenges are some time early November. the challenges are dyno. to see highest overall horsepower and best power-to-weight ratio, fastest 1/4 mile drag, fastest lap time at a road coarse track, best fuel mileage, and a static appearance judging by a group of unbiased judges. also all competitors are required to drive cars to and from challenge areas. so cars will need to be "road legal" at least enough to not get pulled over/towed if a cop were to drive by you. also there is one more aspect to the challenge and that is resale value. The plan is to see how much money you can get for your car after the challenge and the overall winner would get the winners pot consisting of 10% of all competitors resale price. If you chose to keep your vehicle rather than sale it you may do so by putting $50 into the winners pot.
point for each challenged are divided as follows: first place-5pts, second place-4pts, third place-3pts, fourth place-2pts, fifth place-1pt, sixth place and on will receive 0-pts. all point will be added up at end to determine overall winner.

finally on to the part you been waiting for since I have owned 2 neons prior to this challenge and I knew the potential of them. I already knew what I needed to get so with out further a due here is the car I chose as my challenge car.

1998 Black Plymouth Neon Espresso purchased for $600
when i bought it it was not running the guy i bought it from owns a small mechanic shop and was selling for a customer who had drove it till the water pump seized at ~240,xxx miles causing the timing belt to stop and allowing the interference engine to do its thing also it was rolling on a spare and it seems as if its been on the spare for a while cause the tread on the spare was almost completely gone exterior wise it didn't look to bad.
well i was towing it home on a car dolly down the interstate when passenger rear tire blew out scratching the crap out of the rear quarter panel, knocking off the gas door and rear fascia and breaking the rear passenger tail light so I swapped the good front tire with the rear and towed it the rest of the way home.




went out to the local pick-n-pull a few days later and picked up a set of 2gn snowflakes a new passenger tail light and fluid caps for the engine cause for some reason all those along with all the fuses/relays are missing from the car
Price-$100


decided to clean up the wheels before getting some used tires mounted on em

before



After


i'm sure I could have gotten the back sides a bit cleaner but I wasn't really worried about it.

went out and was lucky to find a set of 4 used Primewell PS830's in 195/60/15 got them mounted and balanced
price-$180

need some new lug nuts only 3 holding on each wheel.

some pics after washing the car to see the condition of the paint.



the headlights were showing their age so i went at them with multiple grits of wet/dry sand paper and some polishing compound. the one on the left is done the right is still dirty and clouded to show a before and after.



here's a pic after spending a couple hours with some rubbing compound


here's the nasty interior and dont let the old scratched up JVC head unit fool you it is not connected the factory one was sitting on the passenger seat when i bought the car the head unit is literally just sitting in there no connector for unit or nothing. thanks for the paper weight.




with front seats and center console removed


borrowed a friends carpet shampooer here is the interior after vacuum and shampooing



well that's it so far. total spent as of now is $880 or my $1500 plan to start tearing apart the head to get to those bent valves and reassemble with all new gaskets and seals for the top end and some other things to get it running again I don't want to go to much in detail about my plans just yet ill try to keep on here to update when I can but like many others on here i have a family and a job so time and money aren't always in surplus.

P.S. i do realize that Grassroot Motorsport magazine does a challenge just like this but by the time i saw that i had already started this. i might enter next years GRM challenge though.

Looks like it is cleaning up nicely and the exterior looks decent judging from the pictures. You got power everything it seems. Nice job so far. Too bad the engine has eaten up the valves with the stuck timing belt. Are you planning on fixing the valves or putting in a new head? Nice detailed pictures, curious to see your upcoming progress.

So happy to see another Neon finally getting the attention it deserves.

I plan to replace the bent valves and freshen up the top end with all new seals and gaskets. the exterior really isn't that great it looks to me as thought the person before me gave it an extremely cheap paint job cause there are some runs in a couple of places and the roof and hood have many blemishes where bird dropping have eaten through the cheap paint. I might keep this car after the challenge and make into DD/Weekend warrior car first I want to get it running again so I can start using it for dd purposes cause my RX-8 is a gas hog. As for some plans I have for this build i do plan doing more than just freshening the top end up ill just leave it at that. hopefully more to come soon and thanks to everyone for the comments

Nice find, especially for the price! Starting to look real good. Rebuild the head and it will be a real fun car to drive again

D-Railed_Neon wrote:Nice find, especially for the price! Starting to look real good. Rebuild the head and it will be a real fun car to drive again

thanks I do plan to do some stuff to the head I just have to keep in mind my budget

do some mild cams used off of the forum or the neon parts fs/ft facebook group, cold air intake, and a ebay long tube header (obx) and call it a day. Love how nice those snowflakes came out. Miss the ones my 02 had before I sold it.

got some work done finally got the head all off and starting the process of cleaning up stuff and replacing things that are worn or broke.


my dirty carbon covered pistons


the equally dirty combustion chambers and valves its hard to tell in this picture but a couple of the exhaust valves are definitely bent.


and the piece that started it all. the water pump. you can see how the shaft was bent when it seized up


some more carnage


this next pic says it all. I think this might have been the factory water pump with how this thing looks. I thought was going to get tetanus just looking at it.


found a couple of things that are going to need to be replaced while removing the head first off the passenger side engine mount


also the exhaust manifold you can see where its lighter colored is a crack that runs almost all the way around between the 2nd and 3rd runners.


also my 3 of 4 shift linkage bushings are completely missing so those will get some boogers installed in them. (sorry no pic for that one)

I did start the cleaning process a bit i got the piston tops a bit cleaner I'll work on them some more to get whats left later on. the good news is I found no damage to the piston tops


well next steps are to remove the valves and continue the cleaning process. I'll do my best to keep posting on here as i get stuff accomplished.

Nice progress and wow that engine is/was dirty. Love the pics.

Loving this thread! Keep it coming. That water pump is where nightmares are made. Wow!

That's awesome that the pistons are intact! You should be in great shape for getting that thing back together!

thanks for the replies guys i'll try to get some more work done this weekend to keep the updates coming

hey guys time for an update let me first apologize for my procrastination on get these updates posted.

so here is what I got done this weekend.

I stripped the valve cover of the old wrinkle black paint I'll probably paint it later.


I finally got the valves out of the head. check out the build up on the back of the valve faces.


I have six bent exhaust valves.


and two bent intake valves.


I started cleaning up the combustion chambers and the ports a little I'm half tempted to just take it some where to get it blasted or dipped but I'm not sure if I'll be able to on the budget I have.


That's it for now unfortunately I really don't have time during the week to work on the car unless I get some extra time off work. We'll see what I get accomplished this weekend.

Got a decent update this week. finished cleaning the rest of the combustion chambers and started a DIY port & polish on the head . I'll just let my pics do most of the talking.

Here's a before and after of the exhaust side gasket matching


here's one with the casting removed from the runner


You can see here about how far into the head I was able to get. I'll be starting on the bowl area next to remove as much of the casting as I can. I'm not really trying to so much port this head as I'm just trying to remove the casting and gasket match/blend everything.


Just getting this far took about 4 hrs trying to take my time and do as best I can. doing this for 4 hour kinda got me depressed about how long its going to take to get this head the way I want it so I decided to do this to motivate me and get my spirits back up.

I really like the way it turned out I will be using this color for some other painting projects in the future.

hope you all enjoy the progress so far

glad you saved that poor neglected neon. good job so far, keep it up