Our employee Vincent owns a 1995 Plymouth Neon equipped with the sohc engine and the manual transmission.
Now, Chrysler has produced the 2.0 SOHC engine for 10 years, or from 1995-2005. For the most part, the engine is practically the same except for when Chrysler started using the next gen pcm in 2003. Other than that, you can essentially take a head off of a 2005 and put it on a 1995.
We started studying the intake manifolds and we noticed that the second gen manifold was much smoother, had no sharp 90 degree bend, and overall seemed better designed. With there being less restrictions, the second gen manifold should produce more power than the 95-99 Neon manifold.
Photo of a 1995-1999 Neon 2.0 Sohc intake manifold
Photo of a 2000-2005 Neon 2.0 Sohc intake manifold
So, we did some studying and found that it looked like the 00-05 Neon manifold would fit, however we would need to do the following:
– swap in a 00-05 Neon starter because the 00-05 manifold dips lower than the 95-99 and the 95 Neon starter sticks out further
– swap in a 00-05 Neon throttle cable and pedal assembly (easy to do, dont get scared, two bolts hold the pedal to the firewall!)
– You MUST get a early 00 Neon throttle body with the early style IAC idle air control motor so you can use your 95-99 Neon IAC
– You must trim some of the fan shroud in front of the manifold and trim some of the intake manifold
– You need to fabricate a new intake system before the throttle body
Now, here are some pics of the work:
Picture of the intake system before the throttle body:
Now, some of you are already thinking.. Why go through all this work?!
Here is the answer..
Now, here is what we changed:
95 sohc intake manifold
automatic throttle body with manual transmission throttle linkage
factory air intake system
00-05 sohc intake manifold
00 early style 2gn throttle body
custom fabricated throttle body to manifold piping
custom fabricated pre throttle body intake system
We gained a solid 5 wheel hp and almost 10 lbs of torque.
If you look on the dyno, you’ll see the red line is stock, and the blue line is the new intake manifold and tb setup. There is a clear, and huge gain all the way up to 6000 rpms then the old intake flowed better. We believe the reason for this is the old throttle body was larger, and could flow more air than the early 00 throttle body. So, we’ll have to find a way to make the throttle body larger to flow more air!
