Thinking of snagging a good ol SRT-4 myself('05)

Around my town, it's either:

1. Truck
2. SUV
3. Expensive as HELL (and not very common around here) sport cars. (IE the 2007 Vet)


And me, being 19, my insurance soars with any 2-doors. And seeing I got screwed with my last car purchase (engine repaired twice, then it blew. Car dealer's mechanic's fault.. he was certified to only do oil changes...)


Anyway, desperate for a car that isn't too costly, and without a high insurance bill (i think i can get it for 290-300 a month), I found this bad boy..


Decals, engine has been tuned up well, looks very nice.

The guy who owned it before worked on it and gave it back ot trade in... it's in good condition, and 43k miles on it. Custom sound system, Eibach springs, Borla exaust system. very well put together..

It runs for 17 grand.. I think that's a good buy seeing thework that has been done on it. (engine sounds great.. the blow off valve sounds definate too.)

Heres a link to it http://www.orrauto.com/ou/atlanta-ford-chrysler-dodge/console.do?page=f_used_inventory


***Link doesn't go directly to the car.. click DODGE in the first tab, and NEON in the second... the SRT4 is the first on in the list.***


Any suggestions? Do the little 4 bangers last? ( i plan on driving it hard on occasions.. not too often.. had ALLOOT of bad luck with dealers selling me with rigged engines) I've been looking up info on it, but I know you guys are intelligent around here (unlike the people i talked to lol), so I just wanted to get some better feedback

Thanks a ton,

Randy

Seventeen is definitely alot for a car with 43k on the clock. You might want to try talking them down to close to 15 if you can. Car looks alright otherwise; definitely not a fan of the stickers.
These cars are like any other car...if you treat them right and give them the proper preventative maintenence they will last you a long time.

Yep, $17k is a chunk of change. I can't give mine away for $15k! I'm sure though you should be able to talk them down. I'd certainly do a carfax or if it's a Dodge dealer, get the maintenance records on the car before doing anything. Most of these cars are owned by young, unexperienced drivers so many have been wrecked and/or ran hard.

Just clicked on the link. That car has been on Ebay I think a few times. It has only brought something like high $9's or low $10's

Thanks. Yeah.. I looked through ebay and some were as low as 10k! Around here (if it really was around here..) miles dont mean too much, since everywhere you go the trip is about 20 miles at least. (highway miles). Drivers are HORRID around here, once saw a guy stall a stang 3 times trying to race someone from the start (and gears started flying behind him.. heh heh heh)

But yeah.. ill have to go back there and haggle it down a few thousand for sure. Tel him =i found one for 10 grand lol. probaly have to buy a carfacts report too. Better safe than sorry

You remember where the fcar was from man? (when ya saw it on Ebay)


'ppricate the info

17k is a rip off. that car is only worth 15-16k max. be carefull when buying an srt4 the dealer will mark it up a ton. In the past i've test drove many and i never went through with it cause they would always dick me around. What you can do is find one thats reasonable online or at a dealership. print out the info and take it with you to the dealership. tell them straight up i know this is what this car is worth. if you wanna sell a car give it to me for this price.

I hate dealerships they always dick you around. I just resently looked into a 04 civic si and they wanted 18k for it and on there dealer website they are asking 15,900 lol i told them that and they were all ambarassed and said they would sell it to me for 16,200 at the lowest. i told them no way that car is only worth 14 k and the most i'd pay is 15,200. three days latter they called me at home and said ok we can do 15,200. i said forget it.

17k is a rip off. that car is only worth 15-16k max. be carefull when buying an srt4 the dealer will mark it up a ton. In the past i've test drove many and i never went through with it cause they would always dick me around. What you can do is find one thats reasonable online or at a dealership. print out the info and take it with you to the dealership. tell them straight up i know this is what this car is worth. if you wanna sell a car give it to me for this price.

I hate dealerships they always dick you around. I just resently looked into a 04 civic si and they wanted 18k for it and on there dealer website they are asking 15,900 lol i told them that and they were all ambarassed and said they would sell it to me for 16,200 at the lowest. i told them no way that car is only worth 14 k and the most i'd pay is 15,200. three days latter they called me at home and said ok we can do 15,200. i said forget it.

Thanks a ton man, (very fucking awesome car btw, i love thoes) yeah Ill do that tomorrow.. thoes kind of cars dont sell too well around here, so I'm sure they'll be willing to mark it down a bunch.

Awesome job you did too, btw. yeah i've noticed dealerships are shitty.. I was going ot get a Cobalt SS, but I wanted one a stick ,and supercharged.

Told them to call me when they got one, and they did. GOt me up there, and there were 2. One was an automatic (lame), and another was a stick. Woo! right? Not. Wasnt charged. Price was 25k for it, i haggled it down to 20k, and he said "You know, the supercharger only adds around 25-50 horsepower."

I replied, ".. you act like thatsa small thing. If you were talking 1,2 horsepower, yeah. I know a thing or two about cars". And he looked down and blushed in embarrassment and said "We'll call you when we get one" and i said "Yeah.. im really sure you will. Cya"

theirs a a SS cobalt and a SS S/C cobalt...and all the supercharged ones are stick....

Well honestly though...25hp is pretty crappy of a gain for a s/c...Once again it comes down to cost effectiveness...the cobalt s/c is just not worth the money for what it is...The srt4 is reliable, easy to mod, and inexpensive...Best way to go

Yep, all the Cobalts that are SC have the manual tranny.

Dave, I'll have to find a picture of the '89 WS6 Formula I had. Man that was such a nice driving car. I've always have missed that but then again, I'm a Pontiac guy. Here's a few pics of some that I've sold...
Silver one was my first car. A lot of work went into that.
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b86/ponchonutty/transam.jpg
The Firethorn Red (1976) was my baby. It was all original, even the paint. It was ordered with really rare options like no hood bird. It only had 20k miles on it when I put in on Ebay about 6 years ago.
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b86/ponchonutty/ta.jpg

Purty

Srt4 are great cars if you can get that for they really go for. it can be done, just takes some dealershopping and negotiating. My best friend bought one for i believe 16k and then added a warranty. he saw it for 16 online, when he went to the dealership they started saying oh it;s 18k i believe. he came back with a printed sheet with the online listed price and they gave it to him. they try and trick you.

Thanks for the replies on my car. it's been two yrs since i bought it. this summer is the first summer i've actually driven it. The heads and cam in it right now are extremely mild which kinda bums me out, but hopefully next spring she'll be where i want her.

Yeah I just noticed what you've done with it by your sig. You gotta tune that thing real BAD! My '89 was just a stock tbi 305 with the 700r4 tranny and I got it to break into the 13's. I didn't even do half of what you've done with yours. With your setup, good tranny, good rear, and sticky tires you should be knocking on 12's. My guess would be that you have way too much carb on it. Those Eldy carbs can really dump the fuel. I bet if you lean it out a little it'll run much better than what you've got. Don't mean to harp on you, just trying to give you a tip.

Around my town, it's either:

1. Truck
2. SUV
3. Expensive as HELL (and not very common around here) sport cars. (IE the 2007 Vet)


And me, being 19, my insurance soars with any 2-doors. And seeing I got screwed with my last car purchase (engine repaired twice, then it blew. Car dealer's mechanic's fault.. he was certified to only do oil changes...)


Anyway, desperate for a car that isn't too costly, and without a high insurance bill (i think i can get it for 290-300 a month), I found this bad boy..


since when is 300 a month not expensive for insurance?

yea i could benefit from some tuning. we tuned out some boggy parts before, but i gotta get a jetting kit to go any further. the real bottle neck on my motor is the heads and cam. the cam is just a real mild cam, and the heads are like 74cc heads with standard non roller rocker arms. On top of that i have a 700r4. i know if i got a shift kit and some roller rocker arms i'd run a high 13 second time. i just gotta find some cash. i'm getting married in august so i'm strapped for cash this summer. I'm also waiting for the weather to cool down a bit cause the last time i went to the track it was like 80 or 90 out and very humid. I'm setting my goals for next spring. i wanna have some new heads and a much more aggressive cam. i wanna put down 300whp NA and then i'm thinking of running a 100shot.

Naw, don't worry about running NOS because that could lead to trouble. The reason why I am saying this is because of the poor tunning thus far. If you can't easily figure out what you need to do at the moment, you could possibly blow the motor by messing up the mixture with NOS.

Don't waste the money on a shift kit. The 700r4 doesn't need it. Now, is it slipping or such it may need rebuilt but not a shift kit. You can adjust the valve body on these trannies to shift nice and firm without wasting money on a kit. It's not like the old 350 or 400 turbo trans.

Have you checked the plugs to see what they look like? Do you have the right timing? Have you messed with the HEI at all? These are all inexpensive items to peek at to get a little more hp. Never overlook the cheap stuff first. They may not seem like a lot but if you can tweak here or there it'll add up. Remember, my success with my 'Bird was purely tuning and squeezing every ounce of hp I could out of the motor. I think 90% of your problem leads to the carb. You should have looked for an old TPI system and played with that. Many guys are going back to that for the ease of tunability they now have with them.

yea i checked the plugs before and after we tuned the carb. the motor is running good, not lean or rich. i'm sure if i could get on a dyno or have some better instrument for tunning i could squeeze out another 10-20 hp, but for the most part the tune is about as good as it can get aside from a wide band and some dyno time. i'm certain the reason why it's not that quick is because the heads are bone stock with non roller rockers and the cam is very conservative. once i get some new heads and the right cam i'll be over 300hp easily. The 700r4 is ok it shifts like it should, problem is it's an auto so it doesn't shift very quickly and theres more power loss through it as opposed to a manual tranny. if i get a shift kit it will shift way harder and quicker. it shifts pretty hard now for a stock auto tranny, but it really won't get much better without some better parts in it. both my cousins had third gens and i've been in them stock and after a shift kit. so i know what to expect. I'm actually surprised it ran a 14.5 i initially thought it would be slower. i wanted to swap the heads and cam before i dropped in the motor but i didn't have much cash and the garage was my fiances step dads so i didn't wanna tie it up for a long time. i figure i can gain at least 15hp from some roller tip 1.6 rocker arms. and if i can get my tranny to shift faster and harder with the shift kit that will really help, plus i have kinda tall gears 3:23. so if i adress those three things i'll be using what i have much better. i might do those three things this summer and do the heads and cam over the fall. the reason why i ran a carb is because i was having a nightmare with the tpi setup. plus the TPI setups are very restrictive in flow and power capabilities. they are setup for very low end torque which can be good but the torque is most times only good till 4500 rpm. i did some research and read some comparisons and i found an article where they made 50 more hp from a carb setup then a TPI setup. same motor and everything. with my old l98 TPI setup i could not stop the codes from flashing. all kinds, i replaced most of the top end of the motor and the car was still really slow and only ran a 15.1@91mph. after finding out 6 of my injectors were clogged and i was still having other issues i just said screw fuel injection and went with a new 4 bolt 350 bored over that was just rebuilt and i threw on a carb. sold the L98 and never looked back. Now i have a fresh motor with tons of room to make big power.

Oh, i forgot to mention that when i ran that 14.5 i had a flowmaster two chamber race muffler in place of a cat converter. i had it in there to try and fool the shop where i got my inspection done and make them think it was a cat converter. it worked and they passed the car. since then i replaced the muffler with a straight 3" pipe and it's noticibly quicker and much much louder. so i'm pretty confident i could run a 14.3 now maybe even quicker on a cooler day then 80 degrees. we'll see what happens this summer i'll deffinatley hit up the track a few more times. I'm not in too much of a rush with this project, i've had much faster cars before this one, so i've had my fun and i've gone fast. this project i wanna take my time and just have fun learning more things about carb setups.

What did you have done to your cars and what were they running. you've owned some of my favorite cars i'm kinda curious.

Well like I said with my '89 Formula it was all stock even with the 305 and got it to run consistant 13.74-13.95. It was just all tuning. I also had a very low mileaged 84 z28 that I had set up simular to your Formula. I had that running low 13's but it was a bitch to keep it consistant for some reason. The silver t/a was my first car and did mostly street racing with that so I have no idea what it would have ran. The '76 you see in the picture I never ran myself but the original owner did. It was the class leader for 2 years until he parked it. I can't remember what he said it ran. I had another '76 t/a that was a 400 4sp special edition. That I had installed the whole Edelbrock setup (carb, intake, heads). I didn't go nasty on the cam because I was looking for more of a good street running car. It ended up running a best of 12.34 before I sold it. I'm sure there was more to be had but I didn't have the time to tune it. I also didn't want to sell it but I needed the money.

yea once i get the heads and cam and the other little things, i'm gonna spend some time tuning it. i gotta get a jetting kit. i think to help me along the way i'll buy a wide band. with the heads and cam i want i should be in the high 12's once i get the tranny to shift better.