Tough as heck!. I got my '98 Neon for $150 back in November of 2004 at 110,000 miles, I just recently turned 255,000 miles on my sohc and 100,000 miles ago it survived a cam seal blow out and lost all of its oil and being driven for an aditional 15 miles with NO oil, its also survived a Mitsubishi TE04H Turbo doing 17psi of boost on a completely stock engine!. Its also survived my lack of money & amibition for oil changes, I've only done 3 of them on it since I've owned it!.

Anyway the last 6 months the car has not been its usual fun to drive self, it had misfires,rough idle and guzzling gas like a Kennedy on a alcohol binge, it was actually slightly cheaper to drive my 97 Ram 4x4 extended cab with a 360! thats how much gas it was eating!.

I finally decided this last week that the engine may be on its final leg as the misfire & rough idle got worse so as a last ditch effort I changed the valve seals and while taking the rocker shafts apart I noticed the exhaust lobes and exhaust roller rockers were chewed up and that the cam had a small groove about a millimeter deep in each of the exhaust lobes, needless to say I put a spare rocker shaft assembly I had on and changed the valve seals and this engine has ***** of steel now!. Off the line power is actually very good now and mid-top end power is amazing! easily beats a 80s 5.0 Mustang up the highway on Ramp (tested that tonight lol).

NEVER RAN BETTER!. These SOHC's certainly have earned my respect in a world where you hear nothing but bad things about these engines, they are TOUGH.

 

I love the SOHC neon. Tough as nails. When my last ACR had blown piston rings, running rich and overheating slightly...it still got 35 mpg.

 

Man I hope you guys are right! Yesterday on my way to work, I found that I had blown my front oil seal!

I decided to put oil in and drive it back home, and it took almost 4 quarts of oil. When I got home, It was barely touching the stick!

I am replacing the oil seal and timing belt (completely oil soaked). Once that is done, I will test the oil pressure and see if I had any noticable damage from the brief time it was basically out of oil.

Here's hoping.......I love this car....It has been a good one up until yesterday.

 

Well it is the time of year to be Thankful, so I am. I found that when I disassembled the timing assembly, my mechanical tensioner for the timing belt was bent! If that sucker had failed.....

 

If its barely touching the stick generally you're about a quart low. Back when I had no idea my cam seal walked out just the fact I had a trail people could follow, I threw every & any oil I had laying around the house into this engine just so I could make it to work, including 2 cycle oil from the 70s out of those lame skinny cans!.

One small saving grace is that the bottum end of the engine will be the last to lose oil, and you'll know if you're extremely low on oil if you hear the engine starting to run rough and callapse those small lifter type things on the rocker arms, happened several times to me when trying to find the source of the oil leak which turned out to be cam seal.

If you don't hear any knocking (past the normal SOHC normal knocking sound) and if your dummy light for oil inside the car doesn't come on, I'd not worry and keep running it hard!.

Mopar 4 banger engines are tough, theres a video on youtube of a couple guys who drained the oil & antifreeze on a 2.2 Chrysler Lebaron and red lined it for 7 minutes before the exhaust got so hot and caught the car on the fire, they never completely blew the engine up, though at the 6 minute mark the head gasket went and poured steam out of the engine, it still ran!. After they got the fire under control they started it up again and pounded it for another 3 minutes when they ran out of gas and then just took it to the junkyard.

 

Found my cam seal had blown out as well! I had replaced the front crank seal and looked up and saw that my cam seal was cockeyed. I touched it and it MOVED! Soooooooo after replacing the front crank and cam seals, new timing belt, new timing belt mechanical tensioner (mine was bent - gee.... only 205K miles on it....), if all goes well today, I will be back on the street!

 

Doggone the doggone so and so of a diseased whatchamacallit!

I got down to putting the crank pulley onto the shaft after redoing both seals, new timing belt and tensioner on, and wouldn't you know it....the damn force bolt on my installer started stripping out.

At least, I hope it is the force bolt....I have been looking for a 12x1.75mm tap that is at least 5 to 6 inches long in order to redo the threads on the inside of the crank, but the cost for one that is super hard and that long is.......oh my goodness! I'd have to change my name to Ben Dover!

I am still about 1/2 inch away from where it is supposed to be to have my belts aligned right, and I'm stuck!

I can't tell if the problem is with the threads way up inside the crank, or just the force bolt needing to be ran through the dye to revamp the threads, so I stared where I could. As I was putting the bolt through the 12x1.75mm dye to reset the threads, the dye holder bolt stripped out and I could not even finish doing that! Had to go get a new one this morning!


Ratsenfrassen tugplugging diddlerdangle fogburning jibjabbing flibberflopping rammerjammer! Dang Blanging Flarg Flossing flabble dabble! and then some!

 

Halleluyah and Pass the gravy! The little bugger is back and all seems well!

I ended up sawing about 1/2 inch off the end of my force bolt - the threads on the end were about 3-5 thousanths less then the threads above them, so after doing that and cleaning up the end a bit, I was able to easily finish cranking the pulley down to where it should be, put on the belts and it fired right up, sounded good, and ran around the neighborhood just fine!

No oil leaks so far! Engine and valves sound just fine and the oil pressure tested fine.

Whew! Bullet appears to have been dodged - get it - "Dodge"d - ha!

Tonight I will give it a full hour run (to work and back) to see if any "other" problems appear and if that passes, I will begin using it as my DD again!

 

Drove it into work this morning and so far, all is well. No leaks and it runs smooth and quiet.

Yep! The 2.0L SOHC engine in the Neons indeed can take a beating and keep on ticking!