My car needs a new engine and I owe too much on it to just get a newer car. :(

I have a 1998 Dodge Neon Sport Coupe.
The base Neon engine is a 2.0L SOHC that outputs 132 HP.
The engine in my car is a 2.0L DOHC that outputs 150 HP.
It's a really fun car and it looks pretty nice (IMHO), too.

It's pretty much my fault because I drive it hard.
I like my car, but I dislike the automatic 3-speed transmission, so I drive it like the 5-speed manual that I would prefer.
It only has 117K miles, but then again, it did have two previous owners... Who knows how they treated it?

I also had some transmission issues about a month ago, but that turned out to be the fluid being long overdue for a change.
I changed the fluid and filter out myself and did the seal wrong when putting the pan back on. It probably didn't help that half of the holes had failed helicoils! So, virtually all of the fluid I put in leaked out over night.
I re-did the pan seal and used a tap & die to fix 5 of the 7 holes in my transmission that were stripped. It seems to be mostly OK now... Might be a minor leak, but I've kept an eye on the fluid level and I'm not worried about it.

So, a few weeks ago my engine was making an occasional light tapping sound... I figured it was getting low on oil and the lifters were tapping. I let it go for maybe a week and it got slightly worse, so I bought a case of oil and put a couple quarts in (it was pretty low). It had done this in the past, so I didn't think much of it. I have a leak in the rear of the engine on the drivers side. No oil leaks into the water and vice-versa, so it's not likely to be the head gasket, but was probably the valve cover seal. I figured the noise would subside and everything would be fine.

The car did fine for a couple days, but the sound didn't really go away. Last Wednesday (2005.08.10) while I was about half way to work, the sound suddenly became louder and I felt a dip in compression. I decided that my car would not make it up the mile+ long hill to work which is still to come and that I needed to park it while I'm in the flat lands where it will be easier to tow to my mechanic. I turned at the next light and parked on a side street and called the tow-truck to get my car to the mechanic, and then my wife to get a ride the rest of the way to work. Fortunately she was still home.

I get to work and the car goes to my mechanic.

The mechanic calls me several hours later and informs me that either a cylinder or a rod is coming apart inside and that the engine needs to be replaced. It could be taken apart and fixed, but that would take a lot longer and therefore cost a lot more. They wanted $2,600 to put in a rebuilt engine or $4,300 for a new one. $1,200 if I come up with an engine on my own.

I got on Al Gore's Interweb and looked around for replacement engines. neons.org has a good forum with persons buying and selling parts and even entire cars. I observed that used Neon 2.0L engines were going for about $400. But then I came across a post where a guy was selling, among other things, a 2.4L shortblock that he had disassembled and reconditioned to be put into his own Neon that he had already sold to get a truck instead. He only wanted $250 for it!

The 2.4L engine swap is a well known and well documented process.
There's even a HOWTO!

The guy with the shortblock suggested I join the NWNeons Yahoo Group. I did so and posted my plight and several Neon afficionatos in my local area volunteered to help out. One has already come to my house (unfortunately before I had the car back) to talk about the process. I wouldn't be able to do this without their help, so I'm glad they are willing and able.

The 2.4L engine is rated at the same 150 HP my 2.0L is, but it produces far more torque. Install a turbo (which I plan to do) and you'll get a really nice pickup. In fact, this is the same configuration in my wife's 2004 PT Cruiser Turbo GT we got last month (perfect timing) and it really moves! It'll literally put you back in your seat; it even makes my cheeks feel like they are being pulled back by the G-force!!

So, I had my car towed back home (AAA is a good thing)... I wanted it in the garage, which is at the end of the alley behind our house. The tow truck had to pull into the end of the alley and let the car down, then I started it up and backed it into the garage. Yes, the car still runs, but not well. It's also got a prett loud knock at this point. The guy driving the tow truck said he had a shop for many years and that he felt that the engine problem might actually be in the valve area, like perhaps a worn cam lobe or the cam out of alignment/off track or a broken valve spring because the sound was tinny. I took his advice under consideration and a friend from church and I opened up the valve cover and inspected for damage. Everything looked good, so we reconnected the wires to the distributor and spark plugs and started it for less than a minute to inspect the mechanisms. Oil was spitting everywhere, but we were able to rule out that diagnosis and confirm the original...

So, onward with the new engine!
Really I was going to do it anyway, but I had hoped that a valve job would buy me time.

The guy with the shortblock lives in Northern Idaho, but he's currently on vacation in Salem, Oregon, which is a few hours drive from to Tacoma, WA.
We had talked on that Wednesday I found out from my mechanic about the engine and fortunately it was shortly before he planned to leave for his vacation and he offered to bring it with him.

So, we're planning to meet in the middle some time later this week.

I'm pretty excited because this is all new to me and I'll be gaining a lot of good experience. I'm not a great mechanic, but I'm learning and improving. Before I did the work on my transmission, the most I'd done was disc brakes a couple times and a tune-up on my Neon (plug & wire change) once.

p.s. One major bummer is that the Wednesday this havoc took place was my wife's birthday and I didn't even wish her happy birthday until about 6:22 PM by text message! Kind of lame of me, but I'll make it up to her soon. :)

A funny image I slapped together this evening when I met a person on IRC nicknamed "darthgnu".

It is basically what I thought of when I first saw the nickname.

This year's Linux Fest was another great event. I'm very glad I went!

I wasn't so sure I wanted to go at first because I perceived the organization of this year's fest to be rather poor, but my wife convinced me that we should go. She is the President of FwayLUG, which is a new LUG still too small to have much impact at LFNW, but she wanted to be there anyway.

Not only did I attend some cool presentations and score some groovy swag, I also had the pleasure of dining with Chris DiBona of Slashdot, VA and most recently Google fame.

It was interesting how this came about...

LFNW was coming to an end and my wife and I decided to take off during the raffle and get some food.

I decided to task some friends from TacLUG if they wanted to join us for some pizza or something, to which they agreed, but they wanted to see if they won the raffle first. So, fine, we went to go wait out in the car.

Then our other friend from TacLUG, Francois, and his wife Tonya, were heading out to their car so they also could get some food.

We invited them to come with us and they said they were more in the mood to go to a nice Greek restaurant by their hotel. I like Greek food a lot, so I decided to go with them and tried to call our other friends, but they didn't answer, so I left a voicemail telling them we were going with Francois and to call if they wanted to join. They later called and declined.

On the way out to the restaurant, Francois stops next to some guy in a red shirt getting into his car and apparently asked if he wanted to join us because he did join us and we convoyed to the restaurant.

When we were entering the restaurant, Chris introduced himself as just "Chris" and I did the same by introduced my self and my wife by our first names.

We went in got settled and looked over the menu while having a bit of small-talk. This is when he mentioned his full name "Chris DiBona" and I knew instantly who he was and that this would be an interesting dinner.

He asked what we do and when we mentioned our fields, he insisted on paying for dinner since we'd be talking shop (and he'd be telling us several times we really should be working for Google).

Chris is a very interesting person and a good conversationalist well versed on many topics. He's had many different experiences and holds strong opinions and convictions. I'd love the chance to work with him.

He's also an ardent Google fan and says it's the best place he's ever worked.

He requested my resume, so maybe I'll be moving back to California.

http://geekswebhosting.com/SlashdotRecipeBook/

This is something I've been wanting to do for a while... Seeing tuxette's latest recipe posted to her Journal prompted me to finally do it.

I'm always wanting to try new things, I like to eat, I have webspace and a recipe site template ready to go, so I just took 10 minutes and set it up.

Please do join and add to the collection.

Oh, and the site's design is kind of fugly, so if any talented designers want to hack at a concept, do so and I'll review it and if I like it, I'll put it up... Just about anything will be better than that hideous orange polka-dot design up there now.
I do have to warn you though, the site template will probably be a PITA to work around. If you're really tallented, I'd love it to be "smarty-ified". Let me know if you want access to the PHP code.

Someone told me (can't recall whom) that the city of Federal Way will be rolling out free WiFi.

I found a PDF confirming the information.

I work in Federal Way, across the street from City Hall, and used to live here with my wife for more than 5 years before we bought a house and moved to Tacoma about 6 months ago. It's a nice city of over 80,000 residents and is getting nicer with many improvement projects under way and planned (such as free WiFi).

Anyway, the Neuros is a great device from a wonderful bunch of people.

If you're in the market for a portable audio player, take a serious look at it.