1997 Chrysler Neon V6 Engine Swap & 4 Speed Auto

If a picture paints a thosund words, too much coffee and I got to see the sun rise








Apart from the angle of the wheels, the old girl looks good in the rising suns rays!




Shame the car was fighting me at every turn when I was trying to trace wiring from
one end of the car to the other. And as I tried to put the plug back into the
gearbox's solonoid pack I realised that something wasn't right there either! the
fixing nut which the bolt on the plug screws into had come out with the plug!





Do you think it is time for a new solonoid pack fo for the automatic gearbox?

I called the local Fiat dealership to find out what it would cost for replacement door glass stabilizers!
for something that is a small 2 inch strip of metal with a bit of rubber riveted to it they wanted £10($17)
per outer drop glass stabilizer I didn't bother asking the cost of the inner stabilizer.

So I thought I would pop to the local scrapyard to see what I can scavenge from other vehicles!

First off no mopar stuff at all local scrapyard, so I had to search for bits. One of the things I was looking
for apart from possible suitable drop glass stabilizers also replacement weather strips for along the top
of the doors as they are also starting to look as though they are due for replacement.

As the local car parts stores don't sell the rubber weather strips any more and they are a dealer part!
As I went around I took one of the rear door weather strips with me to get the right length. There were
2 cars that looked promising for the weather strips a Vauxhall Astra convertable and a ford puma.

While wandering around the yard a blue volvo caught my eye, since the scrapyards remove the number
plates from parts cars before they are put in the yard you may think I wouldn't have realised it wasn't
mother's old v70 estate. Wrong as the bonnet was up I could tell from a good 30+ feet that it WAS
mother's old car as the emergency DIY fix for a heater hose at a car show was still in place and blatantly
obvious :lol:

So at a cost of £25 for both front seats of the old estate and £5 for the guys at the scrapyard to remove
them and haul them over the top of the cars around it and to the other end of the scrapyard to the gate
I will be pick them up Tuesday and it saves me a whole load of pain for the cost of a fiver :lol:

When I got home I offered up the astra and puma weather srips to the car. Yes they were long enough
but they didn't even touch the door glass I will be going back to that scrapyard on tuesday to get some
more off different models!

You may ask WHY I have bough the Volvo seats? Well the mk2 neon interior has been in mother's horse
box for a while and the front seat have been attacked by vermin!!! The rear seats survived somehow!
And as the Volvo front seats were the only ones that didn't set body off in one form or another, I will see
if they will fit into the neon. I will get both the mk2 rear seats and the volvo front seats recovered so they
match, even if I have to do it myself! Yes I own a sewing machine and have repaired or adapted seat
covers on a ford before! She is going to be a comfy cruiser.

On monday I called to see if by chance that my rear control arms modifications had been completed
they hadn't so I popped upto the scrapyard. They had only taken the seats out of the volvo that
morning. So those seats were put in the back mother's astra before I went on the hunt for weather
strips again.

The comparison between the neon's original weather strip


And every other car tends end in the same result there is a whooping gap between the window and
the weather strip taken from other vehicles!!!




As I needed to keep out of the way so the rest of the family could do stuff when they got home from
work, I made a start on the Volvo drivers seat. The adjusters might need replacing as I bust one of the
handles removing it. The base seat cushion was what I was aiming for first, get it off the cushion
without damaging either one. There were oil marks along with the dirt of heavy use on the seat cover.




After removing vertually all the metal stays from the cover it went in a 60 min wash at 30 degrees C with
washing powder and the equivalent of vanish (equal amounts) all the stains gone but all the materials
showing their age and abuse!




After the rainfall tonight, I don't know what it would be like for working on the car!
I want to get back to the wiring, but if it is raining I will continue to strip the Volvo seats back down
carefully along with the reminents of the mk2 neon front seats(one reason for having the caravan).
If it is dry then I will be working my way through the ecu plug wires one at a time tracing them from
one end to the other throughout the car :cry:

I went to the car meet at the OK diner which was a very good turnout but I forgot my camera phone
(DOH!) a lot more cars than usual including a pink 1959 Cadillac 4 door with white wall tyre and white
roof. Some B******d had hit the front left wing and taken it back to bare metal!!

One of the reasons I made a serious effort to get to the car meet was that there was usually a guy
there who reupholsters car interiors, and I was hoping for his advise on what decisions that I would
need to make before calling to his business to get a price on him doing the seats. Unfortunately he
wasn't there but one of his friends was, so I did managed to get his number.

Depending on the brakedown of costs would depend on the options I will choose from. There is one
idea which has crossed my mind along the lines of the 2 tone beige and brown interiors that were one
of the options from the factory but my version is the factory door cards and dash upper stays the same
but the lower is a deep burgundy red similar to that of an old mk2 Jag(pie in the sky, money no object!)

Or a more realistic budget option is for the old design and colours of grey with black piping.

Lets carry on with the Vovlo seat adaptations and fitment. After removing the mk1 drivers
seat, I bolted the front part of the mk2 seat frame down. This is the reference point for the
Volvo seat fitting.




With the back of the volvo seat still attached, it was placed on top of the neon base frame.
As you can see the tube which is part of the Volvo seat base which is for side impact is in
need of a bit of a trim. An inch or so either side ought to do the trick!






Because the left side of the seat is further over the right side of the seat is touching the
pillar plastic covers. (plus the side airbag is still in the seat!)




Some of the springs and cover retainers from the inside have been removed. But I still
have to get that bloody head rest of to pull the cover and foam which have even more
clips inside! That cover looks horrid but the seat was bloomin cumfy!








with the back of the seat removed it was easier to cut the tube down to a more suitable
length. A new plate will be welded over each end to keep it's strength.






With the tube cut the seat base could be placed better for calculating the next bit to
made for bolting it to the cars floor. The Volvo seat base needed to be on top of part of
the left runner, yet the right needed to be further over!








With the runners paralleled up but not in the correct position, as seat base wasn't able to
be mover forward or back on the runners without losing a couple of the bearings again! I
squared up then tried it with the seat foam.










Please note that the volvo seat sat upon small box sections in the floor of the V70 so the
tracks were flat and more or less parallel to the floor. So the rear had to have a way to
raise them off the floor of the neon, so they could run as they were!

The left rear fixing tab placed on the car (then the bench on how it will go on the car) This
was the worst one to figure out due to the runner track being over the hole, or in such a
way that the bolt could never be tightened!














The right rear fixing tab placed on the car (then the bench on how it will go on the car)





The angle iron for the front fixing tabs have already been cut.

Tomorrow I will drill the bolt holes prior to the back assembly's being welded together on
the bench. They will then be bolted into place and the runner track then tack welded to
them. Before the proper welding done off the car. I will then grind and sculpt them to a
more sthetic shape!

Dad did the welding on the rear brackets, but couldn't do the welding of the tracks.
It took about an hour for these to cool down before they could be worked on, and his
back was playing up. So the rest of the welding done in a day or two.




And a bit of sculpting with the grinder. Edges smoothed off so somebody getting in
the back doesn't cut themself retching for something they have dropped on the floor!




Bolted in postion ready for the next time my dad can weld.




I didn't want to make the pads/feet too small as they are spreading theweight
better than the old ones.




As the rear right foot rests on the curved part of the floor I didn't see the
point of making it a box section as it is also spreading the weight. That and
the metal is thick enought for the bracket not to need too!




I found that as the seam in the door frames run perfectly paralle down both sides
of the car, it was possible to use this as a point to use in setting the seat base
coreectly read for the tack welding. From the side of the runner to the seam is a
perfect 10cm.




With the seat rear being higher off the floor than the neon's anybody would be
able to put their feet under more easily and have a less cramped seating position
I will be putting out a few enquirers about costs in have someone else make the
seat covers.

After a telling off by the podiatrist at the hospital on Wednesday afternoon, Who has
told me to stay off my feet as much as possible. I thought it best to have a start on
converting the mk2 neon instrument cluster to fit into the mk1. I can do this in the
house, even more so as it is forcast heavy rain for the next week!

As a point of referance here is another mk2 neon instrument cluster(white dial version)
And as you can see there is a lot more plastic which makes fitting it in under the dash
imposible in it's current form.




I took the clear plastic lense off the cluster then carefully cut above the chrome dials
leaving as much of the plastic tabs so that they are something that could be glued to
later. Usin the damaged lense off an old mk1 instrument cluster as a guide of how much
to cut off the cluster cover.



I didn't want to take off too much in one go and have left a bit to work with on the curve.
mk1 cluster lense as guide making doubly sure all the warning lamps will be in the cluster.







The mk1 front cover without lense shows how much of the display/gauge plate that will need
to be removed for a good fit under the mk1 dash.




he same mk1 front cover as above with the main structure of the mk2 cluster, and everything
above ther black curve has to go!




Here are the mile counters. Okay the counters and the reset butons are in the same place,
but as the digitail one has the resetable counter built in there was no need for a seperate
counter. Also the circut board on the mk1 must have been for a manual transmission as there
is no gear selected display. I am thinking that the tinted plastic film could be cut out for
both displays and a clear lense to replace them both so the old rotating drum number counter
once modified and made longer so it could take it's place but right across to cover both dials.

As dad was able to do a bit of welding, the seat tracks were tack welded to the new feet. The seat
base was then unbolted and then moved to the bench where the tracks were removed. If the tracks
hadn't been removed then there would have been a high chance that the nylon bearing spacers
would have either melted or caught fire!

The feet were then properly welded to the tracks, and the tube on the seat base frame which had
been cut shorter re-sealed with some fresh metal discs.




After a bit of trimming and a bit of sculpting with the grinder they look less Heath Robinson!




I hung them on the line before giving a couple of coats of primer(I should never have used hammerite
as the satin black top coat didn't like it)




Hung up in the shed to dry as a few drops of rain fell and I wasn;t taking the chance leaving the pieces
out overnight if it was going to pour it down.

I'm bound to say that what you are doing is pretty amazing.
You first go and choose a car that is the motoring equivalent of syphilis, you break your whatsits fitting an engine that was never ever meant to go in the engine bay, sort through the mess of wiring that would have most of us torching the car down a country lane and you have had to fabricate like mad to get stuff to fit.
There are some superb builds on here being created by some very clever people but you have perseverance beyond human extremes.
Great work.

This morning I called into Elite Foam
I will have one seat re-uphostered in the next few weeks. So I have had to buy a couple of things

Off ebay
Galvanised Steel Hog rings (1 pack of 250 ring) = £4.13
Pistol Grip Hog Ring Clipper = £7.45
9.5mm Steel Ball Bearings (pack of 25) = £1.49

Segal Motor Trimmings
2m of Saville Grey (Jag03)
2 x £22, + £10(courior)= £54

The piping is goung to be in a dark green(not too dark) which Elite Foam who will be making up the
covers for me will be getting, as they have an acoount with them and have to order other stuff too.

£22 per meter of vynil for seat reupholstery is expensive according to the company that will make
the seat covers up for me, but even they had to agree it was hard to get a hold of grey vynil at
the moment

The 9.5mm Ball Bearings are to replace the old ones which Iam missing a few now as the tray
containing them wentr over in the shed!

This afternoon I called down to Flavell's for the modifyied neon rear control arms, and this was
parked out fron of the workshops.




I got the control arms home.




I placed one of them up to the car placing one end over the bolt in the box section so it would be a
true show of the fully compressed/wound in length of the newly modified parts compared to the old
original length ones still on the car.
i





The control arms have been hung on the wall inside of the shed out of the road for the moment so they
don't get damaged. I will need to give the a few coats of paint before I fit the bushing kit.

Should I be looking at a pair of dog leg trailing arms/torsion bars to go with these control arms?
Oh curse word! I'm out of paint, oil, wiring,etc again! and no money to buy them!