Hey guys,

So christmas of 2010 i got a 2004 dodge neon es. I'm a huge Mopar lover and my parents thought it'd be a good starter car for me. I've been on and off about deciding to supe up the car or not since it is only an es. Last february my tranny pulled and i had to lay out a huge chunk of money to get a new one. It was pretty demoralizing and made me not want to work on her anymore. So far she's completely stock. All i've done to her was put a gray mopar stripe on the hood and instead of buying black rims i just spray painted the rims black to give it a cooler look (cheap, but money saving). I'm unsure if i should save up my money for an Srt-4 or invest money into this car. She now has 82,000 miles and I treat her pretty well. Also, I work for a mopar restoration auto parts store where they can get me Mopar parts for my vehicle at a discounted rate. If you guys could just let me know what you think or just shoot out some ideas for me it would be amazing. I'm a total gearhead but still a beginner and i'm not sure if i should save up for an srt-4 or if it's worth putting in cold air intakes and such for this kind of car. Thanks.

 

Personally I'd trade up for the SRT-4. It is a MUCH better base to build off of. You are going to hit your max potential with the ES too fast and feel like you wasted a lot of money for little gains and regret not just swapping to the better base in the beginning.

When I bought my Mustang I had the option of the GT or Cobra and I went with the lower base. After putting around 15k or so into her, all I have to show for it is 350 rwhp all motor and around 550rwhp when I spray. If I would of went with a Cobra and put the same amount in, I'd be looking at 700 rwhp every time I hit the gas.

Don't make the mistake of settling for less.

 

Thanks for the advice. The only problem that's holding me back from the Srt-4's is the price. Usually for decent one's they are $10,000. And i have nowhere near $10,000. I could probably trade in my current car for $2,000 or so and then make monthly payments on the Srt-4 but it'd be really tight. I don't make much income after i pay for all of my bills and gas money. So it makes things hard to save up for $10,000. If i could find a running one that was just beat up for $5,000 and try to do a trade off, pay monthly payments, and then work on restoring her a bit then that would be great but i can't find anyone who's selling their Srt-4 for that low even if the body work is damaged.

 

If you traded in for 2k on a 10k purchase and finance 8k you'll only be looking at around $174 a month in financing depending on your credit score / credit age.

But you can find them for cheaper if you shop around

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/cto/2454621584.html

2003 for 7900 OBO. Can probably offer $7k and get it. With $2k down and financing only $5k you can get around $109 a month

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/ctd/2451900700.html

2003 for $8885 with 96k miles. Would be around $150 a month after $2k down.

 

look at it this way , if buy an srt 4 you will be like everyone else , unless you dont care about that. Really the car you have now is a great car and alot can be done over time. if you want to put in the hard work oyu can come up big. i own an 03 se and recently have started to upgrade things , nothing motor yet but all in looks. most of the srt stuff swaps right over fairly easy on 2nd gen neons. even a turbo setup is well within reach if you want to put in the work over time. then you have a unique car not many people have.Also i like to say if you buy an srt your gonna be still be spending alot of cash down the road in stage upgrades and **** , thats why they make em to upsell on performance stage 1-4.as it is i have a very unique neon and i would have it no other way , theres still alot you can do to that 2.0 N/A motor as well. honestly the pissing match match over hp and **** is seriously burnt , who cares about 500 , 700 hp? way overkill for a street car. are u gonna street race? again burnt , youll be fixing it more than driving it , i say stay with what you got , take care of it and upgrade over time , no need to to rush.

 

Lets see you can get a mopar lip kit for the outside and for the engine you can do the srt turbo swap you got your neon already so I would just mod the engine to be like a srt4. You can build your own sleeper srt4 in your se.

 

Sounds like a good idea, How much would be the mopar lip kits cost by any chance?

 

This is where the term ricer gets used. I think it is rediculous when someone puts a **** ton into the cosmetics of a car, and then have it run 16.5. Those are the people that give neons a bad name IMHO. I'd rather stick with the 14.2 on a completely stock SRT-4. Much better bang for the buck. Not as much cosmetic is needed to an SRT-4 because it already looks like a decent car.

And the fixing it more than driving it only applies if you don't do supporting mods while upgrading. My goal for my car is 1000 rwhp and for it to be fully streetable. If I do that on a stock motor, then yes I will be fixing it more than driving it. But since I'm getting my engine, transmission and rear end built around my goals, it will run safely.

 

[quote=DeceptioN;2536580]This is where the term ricer gets used. I think it is rediculous when someone puts a **** ton into the cosmetics of a car, and then have it run 16.5. Those are the people that give neons a bad name IMHO.

WOW really? i guess its to each his own really. on a daily driver its really not practical to run so much crap and spend the extra cash on premium. personally i dont care if my car runs 2 seconds faster in a quarter , and brag about who i beat racing on the expwy when they prolly were not trying anyway. i guess we should all run around stock unless we have a bunch of engine mods cause it would just be so cool to have 1000 hp in gridlock on the 101 or a car that can reach 202 mph in a max 65 zone. i mean why wouldent i want to drive super fast and endanger everyone else around me? id be an ******* if i dident. thats it im buying a viper , cause after all it just makes sense to fill up every 2 days to show everyone i have more money than i know what to do with. and of course id really like to spend 3 times what others pay for parts because hey my image is at stake here.. i mean if its a track car , ok , but damn its like your gonna roll up at the stop light look around , throw revs and smash off the line , relax man your not vin diesel , " you owe me a 10 second car" coolest street racer ever......................................

 

Hey now kids, let's play nice. I was just asking for some advice. In my dreams yes, I'd love to buy an Srt-4, but i simply do not have the amount of income to receive one right now and I didn't know if installing a cold air intake into my es and a new exhaust system would be a bang for my buck. If i'm going to put money into a part then I want to know that it will perform the best it can. I mean the cold air intakes will only shoot out a few more horsepower, and for a es is that really worth it? Another question I have is, if I was to try to transfer parts over from a Srt-4 to my es how would I do that? And when I ask that I mean in what process should i get my parts in? I'm a beginner so I'd like to know what steps i should take to fix her up. The new tranny I bought already had 72k miles on it and it's already causing problems so i didn't know what was the best route to take. If i was to supe up my es, could someone give me a step by step procedure on how I should transfer things over? It'd be greatly appreciated, thanks.