Hey, I'm planning on going turbo and im considering the idea of rebuilding the bottom end so I can boost more and not worry about teetering on the edge of a blown motor. I'd consider myself very mechanically inclined and have a good amount of general experience, but ive never rebuilt an engine before. I don't have any exotic tools in my garage either. Im wondering, assuming I have good instructions, am careful, and not an idiot (I like to think that I'm not), approximately how many hours of work should this take? Will I be able to rent the necessary tools? How difficult in general is it overall? I was looking at the howell performance kits as a start (I like the hahn kits for the turbo). PS. The car is an 01 RT with 75k on it. Thanks for any help.

 

Things you'll need to do are remove the cylinder head, drain the block of all fluids, then remove the oil pan, and do everything in between. Removing the cylinder head will probably take 4-5 hours if you have never done it before, maybe more, maybe less. Then an hour for the oil pan...then of course you have to remove the old parts and install the new ones, which is hard to say how long this will take because nothing ever goes smoothly, and sometimes parts just dont want to cooperate. I would give yourself plenty of time for everything, so dont try ther install if you need the Neon the next day and you wont have any other kinds of transporation.

Some special tools you will need (that you can rent from Autozone) are a piston ring compressor, 3-jaw pulley puller, and then plenty of sockets and hand tools and LOTS OF paper towels! lol. I'm sure I'm missing something, but I'll think about it and post back up...

As for overall difficulty, for someone who has never taken apart an entire engine and then put it back together, the project will be difficult, especially since the block and everything is still in the car...having the engine on a stand is one thing, working on it while its in the car is a whole different story. With that said, its not impossible by any means, and with some help you shouldnt have any major problems.

 

If u get the Hahn turbo kit, make sure u get it at Modern performance before Howell. Howell is a bit more expensive.

 

and Modern has better service ( my opinion)

 

yea modern is cheaper for damn near everything vs. howell but its all good, and if you really dont want to do this yourself you can always find a good engine & trans shop around you and have them do it.... think about it if you have all the parts and you tell them what you want done they will only charge you for labor, which should be roughly lets see they usually charge what $20-$35/hr so lets do the math..... ohhhh man summer time math! SOMEONE CHECK IT FOR ME! haha.... ok it should take them around 3-5 hours so you will likely spend i'd say...$105-$175 on the high side... or possibly $60-$100 on the low side.... so you might want to just get it done right and pay the extra $ i know i would... and there are some motor shops around me that let you stay with the guys while they work on it but you have to stay a few "flexbile" feet back from them while they are using tools and such... but its honestly a better way to learn that way if you ask me..... so you would prolly end up spending somewhere in the neighborhood of about $1274.99(from Modernperformance) +shipping, after its all said and done, which in my opinion is reasonable b/c you are right about in the same area as if you were considering buying it from howell. correct me if im wrong here..... im just tossing out numbers

 

$20-35 an hour is pretty conservative..... i would say more like $50-75 depending on the shop. It is not all that hard to do. The two most important things i would say are time and SPACE!!! Pull the engine out and put it on a stand then do the work, the extra hour to pull the motor will save you 3-5 in the end. get two big tables and lable EVERY nut, bolt, screw and part and keep a log of the order you did it in. If you do it right its not that hard... but very messy so clean as you go!!

 

now i noticed on modernperformance.com that they only offer the 8.6:1 compression bottom end kits in a .20 over bore size... will that be a direct fit on our neons or will it require the cylinders to be bored .20 over as well?

 

yeah you would have too get the blocked bored too fit them but boring the block is good idea if you plan on rebuilding a high millage motor anyway

 

Yeah, it requires boring, and if your gunna build your whole bottom end you might as well do it right and build it as far as you can!

 

yea but that just makes it more of a pain in the butt ya know?