I bought a 95 2 door, SOHO manual transmission Neon with 134,000km on it. Bought the car for $1700 cert. and e-tested. (These are required in Ontario to obtain license plates). I have now had the car two months, and put about 2000km on it. The car has the following problems with it;
- Minor oil leak that appears to be the oil drain plug (it only leaves a mark on the driveway when left over night.)
- Front wheel bearings are noisy at or above 60kmph
- Gas gauge goes from reading full, to reading empty, 100km after filling up
- Shifter difficult to get into lower gear when slowing down (specially 2nd and 1st gear)
- Minor exhaust leak somewhere around the Cat and manafold area
- AC does not work (I do not use AC anyway unless it is raining)
- There is a scratch in the winshield on the passenger side, where it appears that the wiper arm had been dragged accross the windshield without a blade.
- Pritty sure the motor mounts are due to be changed. After changing the spark plugs, I noticed that the engine shifts a fair bit when lightly applying the thottle.
I am also starting to wonder if the odometer had been rolled back, as when I took the gauge cluster out to clean the contacts (was hoping this would solve the gas gauge issue) there was a screw missing from the bottom left side of the cluster. (This has to be the hardest screw to install into the cluster.) I know when I bought the car that I was buying an old car. The body is in perfect shape, with no rush, dents or anything. I was also only looking for something to last one to two years with maintenence and maybe some work. It was bought primarly to drive too and from work (approx 15km each way). Any ideas on fixes or things to try to resolve some of these issues in order to get atleast a year out of it without spending alot of cash? Would replacing the motor mount inserts maybe resolve, or reduce the shifting problem?
Mike e-mail mlawrenc(at)rcc.on.ca