A frined of mine had a 97 neon w/ manual tranny... iits got like 160,000 miles and hes determined to fix it.

Im actually quite impressed with the reliability of these cars, this car has been put through so much.
The first problem im fixing is waht is left of crashing into a curb at about 50mph... the passenger side axle needs replacing, im putting that in this weekend. It is the only thing preventing the car from being driveable.

He had a problem with his speedo going out probably last year, he was just going down the street and bam it dident work... he took it to some redneck mechanic (who wasent even a mechanic, and is jail now so they cant do anything) he said that the tranny was completely messed up inside and that "the gears were stripped" even though I drove the 2 days before and it shifted perfectly smooth, and the clutch felt good.

This guy threw in a different tranny, he got it back and the speedo did work, but not the tranny doesnt shift right, clutch is trash and 25 mins of driving the speedo went out again. It is even missing the little plastic bushings in the ends of the shift linkages where it goes to the tranny, so its got hella slop in the shifter. Also, the gear ratios feel different.
I never experienced this, but he said with this tranny when your att highway speed randomly the rpms will fall and the whole car will lurch forward and then back again and will be fine. I dont know weather that is tranny or not, but thats waht he says... He said if he pushes in the cluch it idles and revs as usual.
He talked to some dodge dealers or somthing and was told that there is 3 different manual trannys for this model of neon? is that true? Im going to be throwing a tranny in it soon and we want to make sure we get the right one.

Are these speedos cable driven, or electrical? Where is the connector/end of cable where it gets the speed from? ill work on it when I get in there.

ALSO on top of that, if he drives down the road for an extended period of time (maybe 30 mins non stop on the highway) his brakes will begin to lock up, get really hot obviously and finally seize the calipers if he keeps going. He said it got so bad once that he had to have it in 3rd gear revving like 4 grand just to keep 55 mph.
2 brand new calipers have been thrown on both sides, after the new caliper gets put on there it does the same thing, we just replaced the rotors (becasue the needed replacement not becasue the break problem) it just got brakelines replaced and ive adjusted the proportioning valve as specifyed in the manual (i dont remember what I did to adjust it, it was like a year ago)
But the brakes are still doing this. he said he was told by several mechanics that its the master cylinder, also he was told once that it was the brake booster... does anyone have any ideas to this problem.

I think that these are all the problems the car has... hopefully we can get it going soon.

 

you can pick up a neon parts car on craigslist for like 500 bucks. get one from 95-99 there pretty much all the same. just make sure that you get one with the same cam settup (sohc, dohc) and for the trans. you use any of the three, although you are pretty well likely to get a 3.94 cause that was the most common. the speedo is electronicly opperated and is on the trans. final drive part of the case, closest to fire wall. it should have a 10mm bolt holding it into place, be gentle with the plug clip, you dont want it to brake. when you pull the speed sensor out you will see a plastic gear on the end of it. this is probably the gear the junky jail bird was talking about, and no it is not normal for the car to do that at highway speeds, sounds like a fuel delivery issue to me.

 

Alright, thank you...

I figured that it was that plastic gear that was stripped, ive trouble with those before. I just dident know how the neons were set up.

So the only differences between the trannys is the gear ratios? Do you know waht available ratios there is? 3.94 sounds pretty good to be considering how light the car is, and the power it makes.

We will deal with the highway problem when it comes, fuel delivery sounds alot more plausable than the tranny... only reason he thought it was tranny was it came right when this guy put in the tranny.

Thanks, I appreiciate it.

 

have you tryed bleeding the brakes

 

Yes, many times.

 

There is a fix for the speedo in the FAQ's at the top, sounds like that is the problem there.