OK HOLD ON FOR ONE SECOND PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!

.......


Now that we have taken a breath, here I go.

I totally understand that you are just learning

Second go with the 04' better design in my opinion and also new and higher ratings in most cases. Plus probabley lower mileage

Thrid now that we have that taken care of here is the other stuff






You have to look at it this way, you know nothing about performance so I would suggest you go visual mods first while you take A LOT of TIME and read, read and read more through this forum and posts.
Knowledge is alway a good thing
Now you shouldn't give up on performance, now there are multiple routes you can take, but please, get swapping a motor for a v6 WAY out of you head....



now here's what you should do, at first keep it VERY simple for a while, until you gain knowldge, a CAI and cat back exhaust is really all you need for probably a year or so.

Now as for the long term power potential if that is really what your heart desires, the thing you really should really do is a srt-4 conversion, it's low cost relativly speaking like 3-5 thousand depending on what you can bargin a person down to on a WRECKED SRT-4, GET THE ENTIRE CAR. for you that is really the only option, simply b/c your still new to the game, and secondly b/c you would get discourged if you couldn't find or didn't know what part you needed.

The other option is build a 2.0 motor, perferably an r/t which is what I want to do with my current car, but it would be way easier to just find a standard 2.0 motor. This would require a lot of internal work that would be harder for you to do but deffinatley not impossible, new pistions, rods, rings and upgrade the head and a lot of turbo components, a kit would be the best way for u but u could still peace together a set up by talking to people here. Also this would alow you to run higher boost and have a greater hp.


So hopefully this helped and gives you a good base to start from, and DON'T be afraid to ask questions, that's what the forum is for but try and use the search button as much as possible.

[sm=outcold.gif]
Wow that was a lot of typing

 

i think Ford motor + Dodge car = disaster. you would have so much money and headache by the time you were done its not funny. with enough cash and skill, anything is possible. but think about a 2.4L SRT swap, with perhaps S3, much less headache, and you could have over 400hp with the amount of cash you would save (probably under 5k). 03 and up will be the easiest swap. but i know 00-02 can be done with a little coaxing. if you really want a sleeper you CAN fit the 2.4 into the 1st gen neon.

 

under 5k is a little low for 400hp but not unreasonable. the first thing you need to answer is how much money vs what do you want in the 1/4.

 

Some people must think that new cars are like they were back in the old days where you could pretty much take any engine, and put it in any car, and it would bolt up perfect to pretty much any transmission. Now days with every single little thing being controled by a computer, sometimes you cant even swap a motor from the same car that is only newer or older by one year! They are doing amazing things with engines and computers now days, but they arent thinking of people like us who cant stand to leave anything stock! They should make two different models of cars for every model they make, one for people like us.... and one for grandma!

 

i've seen a neon with a 2.4L Stratus Motor swapped into it, it was also turboed you could do that if you wanted to as well might take a bit more custom work though... but would be cheaper than the SRT-4 conversion.... just a thought...

 

SRT-4 block is a re-worked stratus block... same cast. The SRT-4 2.4l is a 10 year old design with improvements made over time. The newest version has better oiling capabilities then the predecessors. Ultimately it is the same motor.

k3v

 

yes and no from 2003 and up you cant upgrade the pcm, but all neons are very aftermarket friendly. other than the civic their probably the easiest.