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Put some new speakers into the R/T today, and when I mean new.. I mean they are brand new! They were sent to me from a friend that works at a Dodge Dealership. They are factory original premium speakers. Only $30 each! 
Neons are notorious for water leaking down the door and causing the speaker to become rusted and the contacts to wear out. So I bought speaker Baffles from Crutchfield for a few bucks a peice to save my investment. I won't know how they sound, but it should be good. (If you do the same thing you need to cut the baffles to fit in the door, they apparently sound horrible if you seal the speaker in). 
Power Steering You Are Next! Today I took a trip down to the Junkyard just to get a few clips for the headliner and side trim. I ended up leaving with an intake manifold, 2 fuel rails, a dozen radiator brackets and 17 brake lights (plus all the screws, clips, and plugs I was after). Not a bad haul.. they had plenty of other good things there, but not very many DOHC cars. After that I wanted to tackle the power steering issue. It had never worked since I got the car, and we had thought it was leaking. But as was discovered in yesterday's blog it was engine oil. So there had to be something wrong with the Power Steering system and that meant one thing.... the pump. Luckily I had saved my working pump from my other R/T, and due to some other tricks I created to help with the ease of installation and removal of the pump I had it swapped out in no time. Filled it up as much as I could with the new fluid I had and gave it a try. It worked! It was almost scary how different a Neon with working Power Steering feels. I had forgotten it was so easy to turn the wheel. Ofcourse the Neon R/T's 16:1 ratio steering rack makes it turn the wheels even faster. This car is coming together.. Headliner is next. Then speakers / radio... and finally door panels to seal it up. (oh and maybe it could use a good wash?) Fixing Sunroof / Oil Leaks Well I finally got around to working on the R/T again. I was getting tired of having water constantly leaking or dripping down from the sunroof & I needed to fix it. Thankfully I have yet to put in my new headliner, so dropping the sunroof assembly was a sinch. Cleaning up the RTV I so eloquantly put on the system was not! It took about 3 hours of scraping, sanding and peeling to get the RTV fully removed. I was out to redo the foam weatherstripping that runs along the perimeter of the frame. Oddly enough they don't seal the whole thing.. Dodge trusted the sunroof frame to work as it should to divert incoming water into the drain tubes. With mine, they were clogged and the area for drainage was small... so water constantly overflowed. I did manage to get it all cleaned up and then apply another bit of weatherstripping. Now water should not drip out and with the RTV cleaned up it ran smoothly to the drain tubes. Ofcourse... the leak is still there when there is just too much water in the tray. But that is normal, and will actually be recitified when I install the headliner sunroof trim... because guess what... that is what keeps the water from spilling in to the cabin! Who knew? The other issue was with the oil leakage. We had thought for a long time that it was the power steering fluid leaking out from somewhere, but when it didn't stop, and when I kept loosing a quart of oil... we suspected otherwise. In my rush to get the car back together I had put the valve cover (and gasket) quite slopily. It wasn't quite my intention to do it that way, as I was expecting to put a different valve cover on in a few days anyways. But that came and went, and the car never got the new valve cover and I had forgotten all about it. But it came to me recently that the oil was probably coming from the Valve Cover area, and I hope I was right. There was plenty of oil located on the edge of the where it was leaking... it has to be from there. So I put on a new gasket along with a new valve cover & an MSD ignition coil. I think it looks pretty good, albeit my scheme was going to be Red, but I think the wires and coil mesh well here. 
Moth@#@$*king Radio My coveted factory CD player has ceisted to function today. I don't know what happened or why it has happened.. but it doesn't work anymore. The fuses are all still good, and it's getting its power... it just doesn't display anything other than a single line on it's face. I've taken the radio completely apart, and I am stumped. No resistors or chips look fried. It all looks like it should work like it should. Looks like I'm in the department for a new radio (and speakers!). I'd love to find another set of stock speakers and CD player for it. New LED Brake Light In Progress! I have been developing this brake light for a short amount of time, but it looks like a lot of people are interested in them. It is a circuit board that mounts in place of the factory reflector. Its stuffed with 40 LEDs with a super high output. All plug and play, very cool. They are being made in China by a factory there. I hope to have them in about a month and be selling them online. Here is what it looks like: 
Installed: 
During the day: 
At Night: 
Cool LED License Plate Light I figured with the new plate, I should post a picture with my new license plate light. It is a setup with about 48 LEDs to replace the regular 1 incandescent. Its a direct bolt in and only takes a minute or two to install. The difference is amazing.. you can see the light in your rear view mirror lighting up the road. I recommend them! http://www.SRT4Store.com/ 
New Plates! I got my new plates in the mail today for the new R/T. They make more sense when you see the two cars together. 
I Believe I Can Fly For some reason the R. Kelly song "I Believe I Can Fly" was playing while I was writing this. I finally got my sunroof fixed. I found a sunroof motor in the junkyard and that was the ticket to fixing it. The other one just didn't have enough torque to open it all the way. Now... I Can FLY! 
Junkyard (again!?) & Fixed Exhaust I went to the junkyard again because they had gotten 4 new Neons the day earlier, as well as a 2nd gen! I wanted to grab that center console they have with the two extra cupholders and install it in the new R/T. I paid about $11 for the console and e-brake. Not bad! I had paid $40 for my other one and it was a deal then. I also grabbed several valve covers, and UNFORTUNATELY grabbed some Cam Shafts. I had assumed they would be very cheap, but they ended up being $40! Because of that fubar.. I spent about $100, but I did end up with a ton of stuff. After the junkyard I wanted to try and fix the exhaust leak. With some help from Neons.org I decided that it could have been the exhaust donut that goes inbetween the cat and the manifold. $30 for the gasket and $10 for new bolts (the Napa guy gave me a set for free!), and I went to install it. The process was fairly simple. Jack car up, remove two bolts and put in new gasket. However, I found that it was a two man job, and needed a little extra help. The new gasket was the trick though. It fixed the exhaust leak, and the system now SOUNDS GREAT. Easily the best sounding Neon I've ever had, maybe the best I've heard in the long time. 
New Brakes So with the drive yesterday, I found that the brake pads were all completely worn down and all of them needed replacement. I hoped this would fix the problem with the sound of dragging brakes on the rotors. $60 later, and about an hour and I had new pads all around. I kind of got lucky because the autoparts place were out of the cheap pads, so I got the premium pads at the same price as the cheaper ones. Going for a test drive, and the brake sound was still there. I didn't know what it was, but I should have seen it when replacing pads. The rear rotor(s) were WARPED. You could turn them by hand and actually see the wobble that they had. So another run to an Autoparts store and $40 later (really cheap!) for rear rotors and I was set to go. Going for a drive and the only problem now is the lack of power steering, check engine light, and the loud exhaust. Fixes for those will come. 
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