Turdbo Neon

It’s been a while since any updates, but I’ve haven’t been totally slacking off!

I bought some new tires for street driving from Tire Rack.  Great experience — ordered them and they were on my driveway the next day!  I got some Sumitomo HTR A/S P01 in 195/60R14 to go with a slightly wider tire that would perform pretty well and not cost a fortune.  So far, they seem pretty good, but they need to be balanced in a bad way.  The car actually looks pretty good with them since I had them mounted up on the ARE rims that I had in the garage.

Also, I finally got around to flocking the dash.  It was a super easy process of cleaning up the dash real well, then painting on the adhesive and blowing the fibers on.  It looks great and also gave me an opportunity to firmly attach the gauge pod and put a new lighted switch on the dash for the cooling fans.

I have the spare transmission apart and have the Phantom Grip installed in its differential.  I did notice that the gears in the diff have a ring on them that would definitely reduce the contact that the PG bars would have.  Based on PG’s install instructions I used my bench grinder to grind the gears down to a smooth, flat surface where the PG will make contact.  All I need to do now is install the new snap rings on the PG diff pin, clean everything up, and put it back in the transmission.

Here’s what the gears look like fresh out of the differential:

Differential spider gear before grinding

Before and after, it looks like this:

Center gear is stock spider gear from Neon differential. Left and right gears have been ground flat to accommodate the Phantom Grip

Neon differential with gears ground and Phantom Grip installed.

The package from Glow Shift arrived via UPS yesterday, but my plans to get all the gauges installed right away were put on hold due to a shipping error.  Instead of sending me the 52mm 3-gauge pod that I ordered, they sent the 60mm one.  Not a big deal, a single phone call is all it took to get the right one cross-shipped along with a pre-paid return label, but it meant that I couldn’t get the new oil pressure, water temp, and oil temp gauges in.

I did, however, relocate the AFR and boost gauges to the frog-eye pod.  The pod screws in to the dashpad bit, just like the stock bezel, and then holds the two gauges.  Because of interference in the mounting bolts on the AFR gauge, I had to put that one on the right side and the boost gauge on the left.  That also meant that I had to re-create the wiring for the boost gauge so that the connector would reach all the way over there.  The gauges were also just a slight bit smaller than the holes in the pod, and I don’t have any of the mounting brackets for them, so I wrapped them with a little bit of electrical tape to take up the slack.  Looks great, works perfectly.

As we’ve entered the deep chill of winter, I’ve resolved to try to keep things moving along a bit.  I found a used Phantom Grip installed in a diff for $180, shipped to my door, so that box is sitting in the kitchen right now.  I need to dig out the spare transmission and open it up to see if the ring gears are the same.  I’ll also need to get the speedometer gear from Dodge as well as any bearings and shims that are necessary to get the diff installed in the transmission.  Once the trans is ready to go, I’ll just pull the old one out, use a drill to try to catch the odometer up, and then install the spare.

I’ve also taken the dash apart again to reconnect all the heater vents.  The main duct that attaches to the top of the heater box had come loose, meaning that all the hot air was winding up behind the dash.  The heat isn’t great on the car right now when it’s -6 degrees, but there is plenty of flow.  I think the car is just overcooling a bit since it’s set up to run hard and heavy in hot weather.  I might put the hotter thermostat back in for the winter to see if that helps.  I also noticed that the switch for the cooling fans is no longer working, so that will need to be replaced as well.

Today, I ordered a frog-eye cluster surround, a three-gauge universal dash pod, a 1.25″ temp sender adapter, a digital temp gauge, and a digital oil pressure gauge from Glow Shift.  All told, it was about $180.  I want to put the AFR gauge to the left of the gauge cluster, the boost gauge to the right, and then install the gauge pod on the dash, where the horn and fan switches are now.  That pod will have the oil pressure, water temp, and oil temp gauges.  Then in the radio space, I want to put in a plate with the fan switch and any other switches that I wind up adding the in the future.  I may look for a nice switch panel, but I haven’t made up my mind on that yet.

I still need to do the water pump and timing belt, so that work should be coming up soon as well.

The final event of the season was over the weekend, and I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

I finished first in class and first overall.  Evan drove my car for the event and finished second, about 20 seconds behind me.  The other 20 some odd cars were behind him.  It was a very muddy event and those old Potenzas shined.  Best part, though, is that the car completed the event with no hiccups even with two drivers, plus Chris took the car around a few times.

Right now, the water situation is resolved.  Basically, the lower coolant tube was too bent and dented to be able to get a tube adapter on so I cut a second bit of tube, put the AN adapter on that, and then used rubber hose and clamps to keep it together.  The solution will be to build a new hose with a banjo bolt end and replace the existing hose with it. 

Winter will be spent with more reliability fixes and getting an LSD installed.

The intercooler piping that I got looked very much like it was for a Hahn same-side setup, so it wasn’t going to work out of the box.  I went ahead and cut it up and used some Aluma-Weld to put it back together so that I now have the hot side pipe dropping straight down, going between the oil pan and the transmission, and then crossing in front of the engine to the intercooler.  The other side remains the steel exhaust pipe for now.  To complete the piping, I needed to add a 2.5″-2″ reducer coupler for the turbo outlet, but the hot side pipe is completely constructed with aluminum pipe, silicone couplers, and t-bolt clamps.

In the process of doing that I pulled the wire out of the connector for the intake air temp sensor.  I couldn’t find another connector like that in my wiring supply anywhere, so I decided to go to Rock Auto and for about $20 get the actual pigtail that fits the connector.  When that comes in, I’ll wire it up and should no longer have any problems with that sensor coming loose on me again.

Speaking of wiring, I bought an 8-position barrier strip with an 8-position jumper strip from Radio Shack for about $5.  I took the MegaSquirt grounds apart, and replaced all the terminals with smaller round ones.  Now the strip is mounted on the side of the dash with a central ground, and each of the 8 MS ground wires attached.  This should prevent any more grounding issues.  I also took the opportunity to tuck up the MS wires a bit more.

Another problem that I discovered was that the coolant lines to the turbo were leaking a bit, and all the fiddling that I did back there in replacing the pipes made the situation much worse.  I could just tighten everything up, but I dropped about $100 on some AN plumbing to re-do the water feed for the turbo.  This will allow me to clean up the heater core plumbing.  The water feed should come off of the heater core into a 90 and then shoot directly to the top of the turbo.  Then, the coolant return should come back to the coolant hard line, go straight into the existing heater hose, through the MS CLT sensor, and then back to the block.  This will shorten up the coolant lines significantly, stop the leaks, improve the flow, and reduce the amount of congestion over in that area.

It’s not installed yet, but I also built a new coolant reservoir out of PVC and pipe fittings.  It’s J-shaped and should fit nicely behind the bumper cover.  In the meantime, I bolted the stock overflow bottle to the firewall along with the catch can.

I still am not sure how to address the crankcase ventilation, so for now, I’m going to leave it open.

Another event under my belt, and there are still some things that really need to be done for reliability.

The grounding situation has to get fixed.  In the middle of a run, the ground shook loose, stalling the car, and giving me +40 seconds, which didn’t help when every run counts.  Fortunately, I was the only MF entry, so it didn’t matter too much.  I’ve considered a couple different options for the ground, but I think a buss bar or ground terminal bar is likely the best option to ensure that this doesn’t happen in the future.

The next issue that I have to deal with is the oil.  I’ve finally got the car to stop smelling of burnt oil every time it’s in boost, but the crankcase is only ventilated — not positively.  On hard cornering, however, oil is spewing out of the crankcase breather port on the valve cover, so something needs to be done about that.  My plan is to put a port on the intake pipe before the turbo and then connect the valve cover port to that with a second catch can in the middle.  I need to do some more research, though, and make sure that’s going to be the best thing.

A local neons,org member was selling off some aluminium intercooler piping with silicon connectors and t-bolt clamps for a pretty good price, so I picked that up last week.  What I can’t figure out, however, is what they would have ever used those pipes for — there’s absolutely no way that any of the sections would work for what I’ve got.  What will work, though, will be to cut up the piping and re-connect it so that it will fit.  That will enable me to go to all silicone couplers and adapters, and also to re-route the plumbing to go under the engine.  In theory, I could likely get the power steering restored to the car, and I’ll definitely have more room for catch cans and overflow tanks.

Since putting the Konis on, I’ve had three events with the car: 2 at National Trail and 1 at Roos Farm.  The car performed well in all of those events, landing me two first place finishes and one second place finish (beat by Chris Hastings who was codriving my car).  I did find, however, that the temps were getting out of hand in a pretty big way.

Because I just wanted it fixed, I changed a lot of things at once so I’m not sure what the actual fix wound up being.  I know that putting in the 180-degree thermostat wasn’t the cure, but once I also flushed the system, put a new radiator in, wired up both cooling fans, reinstalled the factory overflow bottle, replaced the upper and lower hoses, installed a new cap, and filled the system with fresh coolant everything runs perfectly now.

After getting the Konis installed, I took the car out for a test drive to make sure everything was put back together.  It didn’t go well.  The car wouldn’t idle, once you blocked the throttle open a hair, the idle had a terrible stumble in it, and when it was under load it was just terrible.  Everything that I saw indicated that the car was dumping fuel.  I hooked up the laptop and checked the temp gauges while the car was turned off and everything was reading where it should.  I re-calibrated the tps but still, it was running really badly. 

My next step was to assume an injector was stuck open, but right before I started digging out my spare set, it occured to me that when the car wasn’t running, all the gauges were pretty much rock-solid.  When the car was running, however, the temp and tps readouts were bouncing all over the place.  Thinking that maybe it was the vibration causing it, I started to shake the ms harness and found that the screw which held all the grounds to the body wasn’t connected any more.

Tightened up that screw, solidifying the ground, and everything runs great again.  Whew!

After getting the rear bar installed, I was able to source a pair or Schroth Rallye 4 harnessbelts from eBay Motors for $125.50 after shipping.  I couldn’t find the original seatbelt bolts anywhere, so I had to make a stop at Ace to get some replacements.  Odd thing to remember just in case:  the seat belt bolts are SAE not metric.  The difference is pretty amazing — I feel much more attached to the car, but the downside is that I’m getting bruised on the up and the down now!

I also picked up a set of digital gauges from neons.org.  The boost gauge is a nice replacement, but the oil pressure gauge needs a different sender.  I also have an oil temp gauge now, but I don’t have a place to mount it yet.  I’ve got a cheap-o A-pillar pod for two gauges, but I’m not sure how well it will mount without the factory A-pillar cover.  I’m thinking about getting a three-gauge pod from Glow Shift for the dash and a frog-eye pod for the cluster and then flocking the whole thing.

PE#1 got cancelled due to way too much rain, and PE#2 was the Sigmatec Enduro Challenge up at National Trail Raceway.  I was the only MF entrant, and overall I was able to place about in the middle.  I did, however, manage to blow out the front right strut at the event.  My plan was to do a LSD first and worry about suspension later, but there was someone selling a set of Koni blacks on neons.org for $400 and I had to replace that strut anyway, so I pulled the trigger.

It took me about 2 hours to shuffle cars around, do some work on the kids’ bikes, put all my tools back from my last junkyard trip, and then get the right front Koni installed.  Miracle of miracles, it actually seems to be in pretty good shape!  The tophats that came with the Konis use a different size bolt and nut and I only got 5 of the 6 with the shipment, so I need to go and source a new nut before I can do the left side.  The seller also told me that one of the rear struts is blown, so as time and funds permit, I’ll get the rears to Koni for a rebuild.  I’ll probably keep my focus to getting an LSD installed, but once that is done, I may look to doing a coilover sleeve conversion on the Konis so I can up the spring rate a little (200-250 in the front maybe and 150-200 in the rear?) And make room for a wider tire.

I spent about an hour and a half getting the rear swaybar installed tonight and then took the car for a spirited drive through the roads of Boone County.  Holy heck, what a difference that bar makes!