Thanks to some crafty seat foam swapping. I now have a perfect driver side seat. The seat that we dissected yesterday had perfect seat foam and bolsters as it was a lesser used passenger seat. That seat foam was modified slightly to be put on the R/T seat frame and it all went perfectly.

Here is the new seat foam in question:



Using Zipties instead of the normal hogclips, we put the R/T fabric back on that seat foam and put it all backtogether.







The result?





A perfect drivers seat that will last several more years of abuse.

It didn't take much to get the car running again tonight. Just a battery and some coolant, and it fired off after a few seconds of cranking. The struggle to get to this point was long and troublesome. It wasn't until after three hard days of work that it was possible.

The car idled very well at 900-1000rpm, I was surprised not to have any Vac leaks and it appears there are no bad exhaust leaks. I did have to watch the painted exhaust peices paint burn a lttile bit, but that is normal.

It won't be able to get an oil change and some other finishing details on the engine until Monday, but it was nice to get it done today. It really was.

It also wasn't the only thing I did today.. I worked on some interior peices and got my turnsignals tinted. These will match more closely than the stock amber signals would have.





The paint is Krylon Stained Glass in amber.

With that seat that I had picked up from the junk yard, we decided to dissect it and pull out the foam to repair the sagging driver seat that came out of the R/T. The process is pretty simple to be honest.

Use a 10mm socket and rachet to remove the tracks, and seperate the base from the seat back.

Once apart, the seat bottom has two hogrings on the bottom that need to be removed, and then the 4 fabric channel clips need to be undone. The fabric can be rolled up around the metal frame (which is quite beefy!), but don't go yanking it off. There are a few more hogrings. There is going to be upwards of 9 hogrings between the fabric and foam keeping it all together. You can spend time bending them out, or just cut them with a HD cutters like we did. Make sure NOT to damage the metal rods inside the fabric. Once all of those are out, the fabric can be pulled off. Get rid of the hog rings, as Zipties will be just as effective to use to put back together.



The seat back is a bit easier. Just undo the Z plastic channel, and roll the fabric up. Its held on with Hook and Loop (velcro) on the sides and has 3 hog rings right in the middle of the fabric. Get rid of those and then keep pulling up. Take off your headrest by sticking a small pin in the hole near the base of the headrest. It should come right off, and you can seperate the fabric from the foam and frame.

Thats it for now.





Be careful not to damage the foam, or fabric. If you are reusing it at all. If you don't have replacement foam, you can try to fix the existing foam with more foam and with fabric over it. Sometimes it might just be too far gone to keep.

The R/T could have been running today but we ran into a few small, yet major snags. The biggest one being a motormount bolt was not threading in correctly, and completely tore up the threads. I managed to run to the hardware store before they closed and pick one up.. but it ate up about 2 hours of work that could have spent doing other things.

I did manage to get the heater lines run, install booger bushings, intstall the intake manifold, timing belt, tensioner, covers and motormount. Not too bad.. but it all should have only taken an hour and not hours. Pulling the engine completely would have been quicker.

Here is a glamorous shot of the intake and chrome fuel rail.



In addition to working on the engine I started to tint the clear turnsignals with Kyrlon Stained Glass paint. A few more coats and it will match the other turn signals.





I guess with the trip to the junkyard, it has been a pretty productive day. But we aren't done yet.. there is more coming.

I went to the junkyard today for a few hours. It was the best I've ever done at the junk yard, they actually had two DOHC MTX Sports there, that I took quite a lot of parts off of. I ended up spending about $100 and running away with:

-Passenger Sedan Confetti Seat (with Perfect Bolsters)
-7K RPM Redline Cluster (w/ tach obviously)
-2 Automatic Throttle Bodies
-1 DOHC Intake Manifold
-1 DOHC Fuel Rail with Injectors
-Trunk Carpet and Trim
-Spare Tire
-Spare Tire Cover
-Power Mirror Covers
-Dash
-Dash Vents

Maybe a few other things I can't quite remember. It was a very good day. I will be monitoring the UPull website from now on, and go in whenever they get a new Neon in.

I really liked the way my headliner turned out in my other Black R/T that I decided I would start out by doing that to this car while I am fixing up the rest of the interior. I plan on fixing the Sun Roof early next week so it will go in once that is completely fixed.

Making a new headliner is really easy to do. It just takes a few simple tools but a lot of time and patience. The material I picked out at the fabric store is specifically for headliners and is identical to the material that I stripped off the old fiberboard (excpet its black!).

This is the basic headliner:



Just pull the fabric off the headliner:



Wire wheel off all the remaining foam:



Get some 3M Super 90 (only the 90 will be strong enough to keep the material from sagging and falling off).



Glue the fabric to the fiberboard, trim and you've got youself a new headliner.



I don't have any pictures of the finished headliner, but I will get them up in a future blog post.

Time was spent today working on the new R/T which I will be calling "AJ SLOW" from now on. It will be my normal daily driver of a car, and also my beater in a way. The other R/T that I have will stay insane and will continue to just sit there.

I cleaned out most of the interior of the car. There is a ton of stuff that needs to go, be fixed or cleaned up.



I made sure to take all the brackets I had removed from the car, and the intake and fuel rail... and clean them up and paint them. They should make the engine bay look tons better.



I recieved a new head from a Neons.org member that was out of a 2.4L Stratus. It looked like it was in pretty good shape, and we cleaned it up a bit. Installing it only took a little bit of time.



But unfortunately we hit a snag, and one of the cam cap hole threads were stripped out, and we had to helicoil it. It really took a good chunk of time out from the work.. not to mention caused a nice $50 extra expense I wasn't expecting!

This is the progress for today. Since today was the only day we have slated for it not to rain. I decided I should work on this and put off working on the Beetle's engine.

Amazingly this has been the fastest I've ever done a job on a Neon. I had my Dad working with me on this one, and between us.. we've each done a headgasket and timing belts ourselves. So doing this one together and it was fast.

We pulled the manifolds, belts, headgasket.. etc. In about 2-3 hours. I know some of you can do whole headgasket R+R in that time.. but this was pretty quick for us. (especially on a P/S & A/C equipped Neon).

Also replaced the tails, pulled headlights, and removed the black paint from the wheels.











I put the motormount back on, and the wheel. Its susposed to rain tomorrow and I didn't want them getting rusty. I also put garbage bags over the engine and other open spots so it doesn't get water in it.

I picked up this Neon for $400 (I overpaid) with a broken timing belt. It has every feature except probably ABS, which you don't really need. Lights package, keyless, sunroof, power everything.. etc. I could have gotten it for $200, but the person trying to fix it included a timing belt, water pump, tensioner, and idler. Which I guess is good for an extra $100 (but $200?).

Its a black R/T to match my existing R/T, but debaded and stripeless. The previous owner did a lot of crap to it. Some of it looks good, but is not my style. All the turn signals and taillights have been blacked out. The power mirrors replaced with BMW style manual ones with integrated turn signals. APC projectors.. painted the R/T wheels black.. etc.

It does have a 3.0L intake.. which will be replaced with an Iceman and Battery tray. It has a stock exhaust manifold (uncracked!) to a stock cat.. which goes to a full Flowmaster system with two mufflers and a 3" tip. Hopefully it doesn't rub, and sounds good.. and doesn't leak! Looks pretty nice.

Here are the pics!





After the wheel and hub broke free from the car while it was driving.. the driver kicked the car (as we have heard).



Luckily.. its in the area that will be easy to pound it out from behind. There is one area where it is creased slightly. That spot will hopefully be unnoticeable.. but still there when done.



I don't know why.. but this door panel was broken in half. Perhaps the speaker system he put in for the car stuck out too far and he broke it taking it off.

Getting new door panels from a member here.

Chipdogg will be getting me a R/T wheel to replace the steel wheel that came with the car. They will be stripped of their black paint.. and most likely need to be powder coated.

Sunroof is off the track, or out of alignment. Hopefully just out of alignment. But I am an expert of sunroof repair now after working on them. It would be cool to try that $2.00 sunroof repair on the tracks.