1998 Dodge Neon Aeromods

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

Its finally time to start working on this thing. I originally modified the car with white duct tape, and was able to reach numbers as high as 52mpg, freeway with the air on at low cruising speeds on the freeway, back in 09. But in 2010, I moved less than 5 miles from work, and haven't really drove the car much as an extensive year long audio project took over.

The goal now is to be able to achieve 50mpg+, at 70mph on the freeway, ac on. Modifications will be done with fiberglass and carbon fiber, and I will attempt to make them look as nice as three-wheelers mods. Return on investment isn't the goal here, as aero modifications have a second purpose, and that is to lower in car noise. This will make road trips much more relaxing. This is important to me as I really only drive this car long distance to audio gtg's and competitions.

I will probably not get any actual testing done for a while, since most of the parts are being built from the stock parts. When finished, there will be some back to back testing with the aeromods on the car and with them off, as well as RTA measuring of noise in the car with and without. Both will probably be done on a dry lake bed to eliminate as many variables as possible.


The car is a 1998 Dodge Neon R/T. It has the less efficient DOHC motor, which currently has a set of hotter cams in it that will be removed soon. Stock intake, stock exhaust. The stock transmission, which had a .81 5th gear and 3.94 FD, has been replaced with a .72 5th and 3.55 FD transmission. There is an aluminum flywheel on the car that saves 8 pounds. It also has some Unorthodox Racing cam gears, which save 5oz per gear. The power steering pump has been gutted and turned into an idler pulley so I can retain A/C, as it gets over 100 here for almost a month during the summer. It is currently on some cheap douglas tires, but will probably get Ecopias next winter. The car will also end up being significantly heavier than stock, due to audio equipment.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

I wanted to start the aeromods at the back, since that will have the most effect, but it makes sense to start at the front and work back. So first up, the radiator duct and front bumper.

Here is a link to the only other neon radiator duct I've seen.

http://www.cardomain.com/ride/223047...e-4#2230478_42

Looks suboptimal, but there's good reason. That is about as good as you can do without removing the front crash bar. There is two inches of clearance between the outside edges of the radiator to the crash bar, and three inches in the middle. I'll let the next pictures talk for themselves.

Current grill block.


Stock


Stock airdam underneath radiator


Room behind crash bar



Side view, bumper on


Side view, bumper off


Front view, bumper off


Not much room behind the rad either, as shown here. I need to seal the fans to it. Definitely no room to duct anything.



Both the inlet and outlet are on the passenger side, which just so happens to be the side where the backside is the most restricted.

As you can see, there's not much room behind the crash bar. There's also not much radiator area exposed below the crash bar. Luckily, I don't think I need the entire cooling capacity of the radiator. The unit that's on the car is twice as thick as the stock one, this ones a 2" thick dual core. Total surface area is about 288"sq. I know the race car linked above never had cooling issues, even at high speed hilly tracks. There's also not much room to make the angles of the duct nice and smooth. So the question is, should I copy the duct work on the race car, with the bottom of the duct more in line with the stock grill, or should I copy part of the duct, but only extend it up 3/4 of the way up the radiator?

[fusion210]

I'm excited to see some new neon aerodynamic modifications. When I thought about modifying a dohc, stock 2.4l cams seemed like the perfect choice. Have you considered those? Super cheap is a bonus.

I wanted to go even more crazy with tires on mine, first gen insight tires in the rear and the 185/70/14 Bridgestone b381s from the first gen Honda Civic hybrid in the front. You'd still have incredibly low rolling resistance, but with the benefit of lower cruising rpm since they're so tall. I did some light measuring to see if they fit, with the r/t struts I have in the front it appears that they would without rubbing.

I think a more sane idea would be coil overs plus a Prius sized 185/65R15. I'm sure the tires would last longer, be able to handle a higher load and give you more comfort while still having a lrr coefficient.



I haven't seen that neon with a duct before, neat! I think I would do something more like nodestiny on neons.org and just use the lower grill inlets and create a sort of box to funnel air into the radiator.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

That's pretty much what I'll be doing. Using the stock height inlets, although the bumper will extend 2-3" further forwards to smooth the transition from bumper to hood. Its just too bad I can't make the duct have smoother transitions. A few years ago, I would have just cut the front crash bar, but not now.

I really wanted to try the 165's, but they just aren't rated for enough weight for my car. I forgot about the B381's. I didn't know those were oem on the first gen civic hybrid, I remember my dad saying his stock tires on his first gen civic hybrid sucked, they wandered over any little irregularity in the road. I wonder if those were the same tires. As you saw in the .org thread, my moms Kia got good gains going to the Ecopia's, and the car handles better.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

So, for the first bit of news, it looks like the project is on hold for a little while. Got hit with some unexpected problems, and money is way too tight right now. Hopefully by mid spring to early summer I can begin again.

That said, I did get some things for xmas from my dad to play with in the meantime.


ADXL335 Accelerometer

This is more towards the audio side, but figured it might be interesting to some people on here.

I'll be using this thing to properly deaden the car. Nothing is off the table, welding, bracing, lead, and normal deadening. I'll also be conducting a sound deadener shootout, with the goal of finding the abosolute best viscoelastic deadener, while also showing how lousy a deadener peel n seal is.


Dwyer Magnehelic Gauge

I'll be using this to improve the aerodynamics on the car, to help lessen wind/road noise. Measures in inches of water, which is sensitive enough to measure pressure differentials due to aerodynamic loads on the car. First up will be getting my radiator duct optimized.

[NoD~]

As a fellow Neon'er (not to mention "retired" IASCA/dBdrag competitor) who's letting spring inspire him, felt that bumping this to ask how it's going.

Any progress on this build?

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

Not much progress really, aside from rewiring my headlights with 10 gauge and relays to get rid of the voltage drop. I was getting a 10% voltage drop, equaling a 34% drop in light output. I'm going to do the brake lights next, they were at 15% voltage drop, or about 51% light output loss.


I haven't done much as we've moved, and I'm not riding my bike to work. Gotta work on getting myself back down to a decent weight. I do plan to work on it more this fall, but nothing will ever be finished on it now, as my wife has given me permission (actually gave me the idea) for a very large audio project car. The neon transmission will stay, along with the engine, but it will be going in a tube frame car. Center drive, as I only use the car when I need to go out of town by myself, plus that's the only way to truly get the best possible sound from the car. Mid engine, rear wheel drive, and aerobody. I started working on some FEA stuff, so I can design a frame. Ideally, this thing won't be any heavier than the neon was, and significantly more aerodynamic. Radiator will be in the back, with the wake of the car pulling the air through it, via a proper walter-korff style duct. Aftermarket electric power steering, electric ac.


The other thing I'm really looking forward to is fixing the engine. There is so much low hanging fruit with the neon engine, that improving efficiency should be easy and effective. Starting with the mismatched oil passages, that cause a 6hp loss at 5600rpm. Tons of casting flash in the oil pumps, tons of casting flash in the water jackets, etc. Overweight engine parts, etc.

[NoD~]

Wow! Quite the project. It's the reason I stopped doing car audio and moved to home audio... the whole Left/Right difference in the cab of a car from a far left or right seat. A room can usually sound 10x better with the same set of speakers placed properly versus your best install on a car... I'd move my RTA mic over 1" and you could see a noticeable difference in the car, where on my couch, it takes a few feet to see a similar difference! Definitely "tough" to get a clean, flat response with great stereo imaging in a car. I've got two 6" in my doors and a pair of tweets in the dash (Basically, the "Sten II" speakers), all running off my HU w/ carefully selected crossover settings off the deck. Does very well and I rarely turn it up past 16 out of the ~30 it can go up to! (those speakers are so dang sensitive... but I wanted efficient sound, guess I got it!)

I think I had 1 more graph that I tweaked a bit more, but here was my response after a few sessions w/ EQ, phase, and Xover tweaks. No doubt with better equipment or even more time I could get it better, but it's "good enough" for $100 in total stereo equipment! lol...
http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l1...comparison.jpg

Have you changed any bulbs out to more efficient lighting (LED)? I did my dash lights. The regular stock bulbs consumed .25 Amps at 12.4v (3.1w). The LEDs, a hair dimmer at the same settings, came out to .014 Amps at 12.4v (.173w). The brightness is definitely a little less, but worth it IMO. I definitely want to do all my non-headlight lamps, but all in good time. Good note on the headlight wiring, I'll have to check into that!

Anywho, hope you get to work on your build sooner than not. Good to have other Neon's still roaming the streets.

[TOOSTUBBORN2FAIL]

I haven't messed with the bulbs yet, aside from the headlights. Being that I wont be using the neon taillights in the new car, I probably wont touch them, aside from fixing the wiring. One of the problems with LED taillights is that with proper wiring, they aren't nearly as bright. The brightest 360 degree LED bulb I can find puts out 230 lumens, at 14 volts. For comparison, with the 15% voltage drop, the stocks put out about 200 lumens. At 14 volts, they put out 410 lumens. Thats a big deal, especially when we get death fog here. Since my job operates rain, shine, or death fog, I have to drive in it, so I want to make sure the brake lights are as bright as they legally can be. In fact, I now use 3357 instead of 3157 bulbs, they consume 1 more watt, but are high efficacy bulbs, that put out 510 lumens.

I will definitely do the dash lights though, as I keep mine dim anyways, and will probably swap in red LED's, to keep from jacking up my night vision as much.

[NoD~]

Make sure to do the light "sanding" on the back of the gauge cluster overlay... it really lets the light go through and rids of the "yellow" grossness. (Course, red LEDs might not be as affected)

Held up to a flashlight, pretty easy to tell which side was sanded down and which wasn't.

When it's all said and done, here's the final results (no extra bulbs, just replaced all factory ones. Directly soldered on as the screw-in units were horrible to work with)

The turn signals go fine. The oil light was a bit dim, same with check engine. Haven't really had any other lights go off on me otherwise. At night, they are all plenty bright for sure.

The only area that was a bit "dim", even at night, was around the 90MPH and the 2K RPM area. Adding in a single LED bulb would probably cure that. It's not high on my priority list, but I'd like to do it just to even it up... eventually.

I used these guys... (very affordable)


The ones I got were the cheapest ebay ones I could find. Downside is the resistor built into the plastic housing wasn't soldered on very well at all. I think 3/4 of them didn't work, but I pulled them apart and resoldered, worked great after that.

One other thing to mention on the tail lights, especially if you plan to do some custom ones anyways, is you can ditch using any type of auto bulb and do some higher power LEDs. I know they make all types of various shapes and sizes, as well as overall output, once you get past all the direct bulb replacements. For example...
http://ecomodder.com/forum/showthrea...ent-20498.html

Might not be worth your time/money, but figured it might be worth mentioning.

I'm definitely interested in the headlight wiring/relay setup. Do you have any pics or diagrams? I have a pretty good idea on how it would wire up and look, but I like seeing proven documentation to insure my sanity when I can!