Hello all,</P>


Looking for any other Spirit R/T owners to share info. with....on virtually anything pertaining to the vehicle. </P>


Happy Holidays. Great site! <IMG src=smileys/smiley36.gif border="0"></P>


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Welcome!!

I used to borrow my friend Regina's Dodge Spirit, that car was TOUGH! LOL! Nothing killed it... oooh... until her boyfriend... then came the blown engine.

~Amanda

 

Welcome. That is a rare one as you know. I use to always want a Daytona Iroc R/T until I found out about the head problems and the lack of replacement heads. Good luck.

 

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Thanks! Those Daytona R/T's are very nice as well. How do you like your Shelby Z? Would you have any recommendations for me to modify the engine? I'm not too mechanically inclined, but I'll drop a few bucks at some aftermarket shopto make it more powerful.</P>


While growing up, a good friend of mine at the time....his father used to design for Chrysler (he went on to head up design for the company...the viper and prowler were his babies)....anyway, he drove a lot of different daytona's. The C/S package ones and all that. They were a lotof fun.</P>

 

I love my Shelby Z, but I wish I could have bought it with lower mileage. It had 145,000+ miles on it when I bought it and over the years it has cost me a small fortune to replace and rebuild parts as the went south. As of now I will be selling it to my step-brother and putting that money into my other cars.

I know of quite a few places for upgrades to the 2.2 Turbo I&II motors, but not many for the Turbo III's. An upgrade computer, larger free flowing exhaust and cold air induction will do alot. Replacing the wrinkled/ribbed intake and intercooler hoses with smooth tubes or pipes will make a difference as well. Try out these places for parts and upgrades:
www.howellautomotive.com
www.forwardmotioninc.com

 

I've owned 3 and never had a head fail, I think most of the failures can be traced back to people upping the boost on cars with over 100k miles and expect it to last. <edited><editID>MoparTurbo</editID><editDate>37979.1369097222</editDate></edited>

 

Or as most people who are uninformed do, drive it like any other car and shut it off after getting off the freeway. Most head or turbo failures are due to people not giving them a chance to cool off before shutting them off. My R/T isn't turbocharged, but I still give it a few to cool off before turning it off because of the aluminium head. For some reason though the Daytona/Spirit R/T's are more prone to head failure and because Chrysler didn't make the heads for them, replacements are not available. I can't recall if it was Lotus or Maserati who made the heads, but it was one of them.

 

Lotus, parts are available, just a little on the expensive side, these turbos are watercooled anyway, not too big a deal for hot shutdowns.

 

True it does help against turbo failure due to heat, but it is still hot enough to boil away the coolant or rupture a line because with the engine shut off the coolant isn't circulating to to lower the turbos temperature. Thats why they make turbo timers, I myself prefer to save the money and just let the engine idle for a minute or two and get the exact same results. My Shelby Z is also a water cooled and intercooled turbo like the 2.2L DOHC Turbo III's. I had to replace a rusted through turbo cooling line(the one that goes from the head under the thermostat housing to the turbo) and it cost me $90+ for the <img border="0" src=smileys/smiley35.gif border="0"> thing.

 

think about the millions of 2.2 and 2.5 turbo cars that were produced, 99.99% of the people did not wait to shut the cars down yet now 10-20yrs later alot of them are still on the road with the original turbo, and every time I find a turbo in the junkyard its always in perfect shape. If it lasted the past 2 decades without being idled after a heat cycle, you can be pretty sure your not gonna break it in the few years you drive the car. I've went through over a dozen of these cars and have fixed or helped work on dozens more and have yet to see a turbo fail due to hot shutdowns.