i drove my neon home the other day with a dead waterpump <27 miles> .
Now considering the damage i prolly did to the engine my ques. is how hard is a engine swap
for a the 97 2.0 sohc? ive never pulled a engine before and to be honest i kinda just wanna see if i can

any tips you guys/gals know would be greatly appreciated

btw the reason i say swap instead of rebuild is ive found a really cheap engine from a totalled 97

 

It's all just nuts & bolts. So long as you have a cherry picker, the rest is just R&R. Only advice I can really give is check, doulecheck and then chack again that everything is buttoned up once you're done.

I've been wrenching for a long time, and I still almost inevitably leave a connector undone or a hose clamp loose or something stupid like that.

 

Make sure you buy a haynes manual for the swap, it will be handy if its your first time.

 

What signs told you the water pump was bad? I've never heard of a water pump just not working unless it was an electric one, I mean I don't see the propeller just falling off or being seezed, pretty much the problem is the pump bearing wears out and it creates a groove that water comes and leaks out of. Also how many times did your temp gauge max out and for how long? and did you shut engine off for a few minutes?

My water Pump had a bad bearing and all the coolent would leak out of it every day and a half till one day it just leaked out while I was on the highway. It overheated on me about 8 times till I got around to changing the pump, so your 27 miles is nothing compared to my 1,000 I put on with it overheating like crazy every other day and me driving it across town with no other choice but to with pretty much no circulating coolenteven reaching the water pump! If my engine made it that far I would just throw a new pump and timing belton your motor and call it good. I do have a MLS head gasket so that may have helped but still no coolent is no coolent and not a very good thing to have happen. As long as the motor still runs good and it has nooil in the anti freezeI'd put a new pump on.

2,000 Miles later my engine is still taking Honda's souls. As of today at 128,000 milesit is the proud new recipient of a Mitsubishi TE04Turbo running at 6 Psi with stock fuel pump and injectors no ping and it runs great!.