Disclaimer: The instructions below are what I did to my car and can be used as a "guide" for working on yours. But, I take no responsibility for what you decide to do to your car. Be sure to read through all of the instructions first before doing anything to your vehicle.

Purpose: As you probably already know by now, heat is a killer on horsepower. And since the coolant runs through the DOHC manifold I figured I'd cut off that part and make it seperate to help keep the intake air cooler. Not to mention getting to the bottom left bolt is a bit of a hassle any time you wanna remove the manifold as well as draining and refilling the coolant.

Application: 1st Generation '95-'99 DOHC Dodge Neons

Time Required: 5 hrs.

Scale of Difficulty: 4 (5 being the hardest)

Cost: $30

Tools Required:

• Spare DOHC Aluminum Intake Manifold (recommended ~$80)
• Dremel w/ flexible wand or better
• Band Saw -- recommended (Machine Shop)
• Cylinder High Speed cutter ($5 Wal-Mart)
• Cone High Speed cutter ($5 Wal-Mart)
• Manifold to Head gasket (Dealer)
• Drill & 3/8" bit
• WD-40
• TIG Welding -- optional

There are a couple different ways to do this. I'll go over the possible ways and then show you the way I ended up doing it.

1. Credit goes to JeffB#2 (aka The Boogerman) for showing me a "hidden" bolt hole on the head between the coolant section and runner #1. This is what makes this all possible. The gasket was made for it, but Mopar just didn't put a hole in it. So, lay the head-to-intake gasket on your intake manifold and put a few bolts through it to keep it from moving. Outline the hump on the gasket where the hole is supposed to be and then drill a 3/8" hole.

Now you can decide which option you want to use.

OPTION #1: This is the best way to garauntee you won't have any leaks, but the other option works just as well and is a little easier to cut. With this method you want to cut off the coolant section as shown in the pic below.

Now you can either weld up the side of the Neon's coolant section and use that, or you may want to look into seeing if the coolant section from a 420a engine (Eclipse, Avenger) will bolt on. I posted a few pics of it below and it looks like it would bolt right on.

OPTION #2: This method is similar to the PT Cruiser's setup. Cut off the coolant section as shown in the pics below.

Now you can either weld up the side of the Neon's coolant section and use that, or you can get the seperate coolant section from the PT Cruiser (P/N: 4884004AA -- $43) and it will bolt right on. I showed pics of that setup below.

2. With your hole drilled, cut off the coolant section using either Option #1 or #2. I used Option #2 and reused the Neon's coolant section after welding up the side of it.