Destructive Chaos

>hotel furnishing in Bulgaria week I had my exhaust fixed on the car.

I had the exhaust manifold replaced with a Pacesetter short tube header because my stock manifold had a giant crack in it. The crack went all the way down the middle pipe causing all the exhaust to escape thus not providing the proper back pressure.

The gains of having the exhaust fixed were amazing! The car idles better and the high end pulls alot harder. Anything over 3000rpm pulls you back in the seat like you could not believe!

I did not have the proper flange for them to bolt the header on, so they had to weld it onto the pipe. To properly weld up the exhaust they had to take the catalytic converter off and replace it with a peice of flex pipe (it’s not cheap). Now all I have to do as add a bracket to stop it from clunking on fast stops and bumps.

The car makes crackling noises when letting off the throttle at high rpm pulls but that can be fixed with a resonator (about $50.00).

I’m super happy with this new header! The only thing I don’t like is that the ‘paint’ that Pacesetter put on comes off after one use. If you have a manifold put on your car, have it ceramic coated first!

The actual header only cost me $100.00 (brand new) but the install killed the deal. I had to pay Budget Brake and Muffler $490.00 for the install since they had to fab up the entire thing. It also took them 3 days (which was rediculess) but they got the job done.

Car feels like a brand new car! I love it!

We were able to fix my car this weekend. It all started back in October when I was driving home from school and the car died. I thought the fuel pump just called it quits so I had it towed to Canadian Tire and they comfirmed it. The fuel pump was died. They were wrong!

It turned out that it wasn’t the fuel pump that was broken. It was a wiring issue to the PCM that was blowing my fuel pump fuse. After about 2 weeks of looking for a short we gave in and took it into Chrysler to find the problem. James - the mechanic - took the entire car apart to check the entire wiring harness from the engine back to the pump. It was fine. He re taped the wires and wrapped them up.

Since then the cars been running a little chunky. This weekend we replaced the new (cheapo) fuel pump with the old OEM one that we took out and the car runs fine.

Everyone says the dealerships are only out to get your money. This is untrue, it may cost a little more to get your car in with them. But it’s really worth it. They took the entire car apart and fixed the problem for $250.00. Defently would have saved alot of money if I just went to the dealer first. As for taking your money.  Yesterday I took my back seat apart and found two dallors under the seat! James could have taken that - but he didn’t!

In other news! This one isn’t as exciting to me..

I did my math exam on Friday and as far as I can tell… I think I passed. We’ll see next semester.

Well as some of you may already know, my blog has not been working properly for the past few months. It’s been such a long time since I’ve been able to post. Anyway, it turns out that one of the plugins that I was using did not agree with the update I did on the site months ago and it’s only now that I fix it.

 Alot has happened since I last posted. First things first. I killed my baby. It was horrible! (if you don’t know by now, my baby - is my car.) I was driving home from school when all the sudden it died on me.

I took her to Canadian Tire and they told me it was my fuel pump that had quit on me. (CND Tire isn’t so good at mechanics I think). They quoted me $700 to fix my broken fuel pump for me. Of course, being me, and always looking for the cheapest way to fix my problems I took my car home. I dropped in a new fuel pump and the car still did not start.

After some more tests we figured it might be the PCM that was acting up or fried. So I went online to find a new one to drop in. I bought a Mopar Performance PCM and dropped it in, still no go.

Finally we check the fuses again. (I know, it’s the first thing you should always do. The thing is, we thought Canadian Tire would have the brains to do that before me). We dropped a new 20A fuse in and magicly the car starts.

Now my problem isn’t solved by a simple fuse. No, of course not. It’s never that simple. We took the car for a drive and it died 30 minutes later after we bought 91 grade gas (new computer needs it). We called a tow truck and now my car is sitting in my drive way again.

We’ve narrowed the problem down to a short in the wiring somewhere. The only problem being that the little fuel pump fuse seems to be connected to everything that is of importance. Tomorrow we’ll be swapping back in the stock computer to try and get some error codes from the sensors. The new computer needs to be plugged into a scanner to work and I don’t feel like spending another $150 right now.

So that’s what I’ve been up to for the past few months. If you have any ideas on what could be my problem. I’ll be happy to hear it! I’m looking for all the help I can get. The guys over at Neon Canada have been great too!

Merry Christmas everyone!

My dad went out to buy a new car (to improve his trip to work - but we all know he wanted a new car). Anyway, enough about his car - that’s not important here - even though it’s really really really nice! Like a brand new jet (and it’s hybrid for all you tree huggers).

Since he bought a new car and the Neon is to old and has to many miles on it to get any significat money back my dad has past the car on to me! Woo! It’s stock right now, but you know me, I love cars and what you can do to them so I’ve already been looking on eBay and other sites to see what others have done to their Neons. I can tell you for sure I’ll be putting speakers in first thing .  I’ve been looking at neons for under the dash, and below the seats - they’re pretty cheap to buy, but I don’t know what installation is like. Installing the speakers is no problem, I know people that work at Future shop and others that have been doing it for years.

My car is a 97-98 Plymouth  Neon with chipped white paint (as all the Neons have). 4 cyl 5 speed manual. Great condition. No coffee stains or cigar burns on the seats. A few cracks in the windshield but that’s fine, they’re not that major.

 But before I can get to drive the car I need to get a job to pay the massive insurance this beast is going to have. It’s going to be $1300 a year - because I’m a primary driver :S. So the job hunt starts tomorrow. Tomorrow morning I will be handing in an application at Giant Tiger! (Yes mom, I’m really doing it - so lay off).

This afternoon I cleaned the inside of the car, now it’s extremely clean! I spent two and a half hours just cleaning the inside. I love this car - I can’t even drive it yet and I love it so much. It’s like my unborn baby. Tomorrow afternoon I will be armoral’ing the inside to make it shinny, then I’ll hook the power washer up and take all the paint off… oh I mean dirt, that’s right, it is really white - silly me.

Some of you (a select few) may be wondering “What about your hermano? Do you have to share?”. The answer to that one is.. yes. But that’s not for another 4 years, so I don’t know, we’ll see how that works out. Eric thinks the car will be past on to him when he’s 16, that means I’d only have the car for 1 year. Hmm, I don’t think so. I think we’ll just stick with sharing for now. Maybe I’ll buy him a scooter - that’ll get him away from the car right? Ha. Yeah right.

Anyway, I’ll post pictures of the inside of the car tomorrow to show off my clean job. And of course the outside before and after pictures of the dirty-paint removal. I swear that thing hasn’t been cleaned for months, maybe even a year.

I hope you enjoyed reading this! Post your comments cause I love reading them!

In closing, anyone got gas money? Happy mothers day - to the mothers of course! Love you mommy!