1998 Plymouth Neon Highline from North America - Comments

Head gasket leaked badly. oil pan gasket leaks slightly. valve cover gasket leaked slightly. automatic transmission is slightly sluggish.

This car is a good car if you know how to fix it. The front of the transverse mounted engine is enough away from the frame to give adequate room for working in this area where the timing belts, and drive belts are unlike the daewoo Lanos. I changed the head gasket myself and the dealer tried to get 700.00 dollars from me to redo the job. The newer gasket that they sell at the dealership is much better than the older one. I just tightened the head bolts an extra 5 pounds and it stopped the leak even better than before and saved 700.00 dollars. Special tools and parts are a breeze to get. I paid 3600.00 for this car and spent 600.00 on parts and special tools to make this car run good. I broke a screw on the valve cover going into the head and I was able to get the screw out with a special screwout.

At 94000 miles the car is still running great. The only additional problem I had was with the brake lights turn signals not working. This was corrected by me buying a new multifunction switch which is attached near the steering wheel. I also jiggled the connections to this switch and also jiggled the wire at the particular bulbs in back. Changing the multifunction switch allowed electricity to go back to the bulb... jiggling the line at the bulb somehow allowed the ground at the bulb to work better. This all resulted in the turn signal brake light to work correctly. The car tells you itself the turn signal brake light is not working correctly sometimes by flashing lights at the dash at twice their natural speed.

At 100,000 miles the car is still running great. Recent rains made the car hard to start one day because the car is a "bottom breather" and sucked up too much moisture into the cylinders I believe. An hours worth of drying and airing out the cylinders and the filter etc cured the starting problem. The modified head gasket that was put in is still working great. Large differences in temperature between the day and night have the ability to actually cause the head gasket area to leak a small amount of oil still. But overall the new head gasket cured the oil leak problem. Sometimes the torque of the head gasket bolts must be changed to accomodate great differences in temperature also. Overall the neon is an easy car to work on. And parts are easy to come by. It is a great car in general for the do it yourselfer.

At 101,000 miles the car is still running great after being garaged for 7 months. Had to buy a new battery. For the 1998 neon one of the main problems which helped to cause the head gasket leak besides the terrible original head gasket was a wrong size head bolt. I noticed when I changed the gasket 36,000 miles ago that one of the areas of the block around one of the cylinders had slight erosion. At present having changed the gasket the car in general leaks very little oil from the head. This car is my emergency car and it is doing its purpose well. Best to keep the car garaged. The car starts better this way in my experience. The aftermarket timing belt I put in 36,000 miles ago is working fine. It is much stronger than the original timing belt. This is one of the best cars in terms of easiness and safety wise to change both the damper and electrical work. Everything is easy to find too.