Thottle body!

We were awarded the huge gift of a $300 residual. Holy crap do we have a pile of shite! Using our hard earned cash, we decided to follow a Neon expert's advice and replace our throttle body. He assured us that it was an easy mod, basically just plug and play.

I don't know who he's pluggin' but he played us.

So far, we've Dremmeled, pounded, puzzled, screwed, unscrewed, and searched. We'd even contemplated buying a drill press... to the tune of $300. Yeah, we're suckers. And more on that later.

Meanwhile, ATS has been creating some kind of Frankenstein bearing press. Pics below.

First off - the starting point! The smaller diameter throttle body is from the stock Neon. The larger originates from a 1995 Jeep Cherokee. Less than $50!



Hard step #2 - widening the slot for the throttle plate. (Hard step #1 was taking an eight of an inch off of a round thingy. Fun!)



Chris and our slot.



The image below looks like a finished product, right? WRONG! Notice how offset the plate screw holes are? Um... yeah. Our spring is too wide. We've yet to fix that. I should just be a matter of cutting down the spring... what could possibly go wrong?



It does look quite nice without the spring in place.



We've made more progress - resurrecting a 1980's era drill press, boring out the Jeep's mounting holes so that it can screw onto the Neon's intake, that sorta thing.

More importantly, however, ATS' Frankenpress (bearing press) has been put to successful (gasp!) use. We christened the press Clifford (it's big and red) and our triangular brace Fred. Cliff, obviously, pitches while Fred is the catcher. Doncha know. Thanks to Cliff and Fred, we now have new wheel bearings... on one wheel. Only one. But they'll get busy this weekend and bang other other out. Here's a pic of Fred's conception:



More work needs doin' including tracking down a new electrical Gremlin. Like I said earlier, what could possibly go wrong?