The pictures on the pages that follow are of the Stratus 2.4L Intake that I am attempting to install for the added benefit of more low end torque. I have been told by several people that "I don't want to use that intake and that it is basically a waste of time, effort, and money." "All of the work required to install it is not worth it for the gains if any in torque." I will admit however installing this intake after the fact on a 2.4L swap is not the easiest and can be time consuming and sometimes disheartening if you don't have all of the parts available at the time and no one has documented it before you.
- The EGR tube is different on the Stratus Intake to take into account for the fact that the plenum sits lower but the transducer that is bolted to the head is still the same one used. You will need the EGR tube to go between the transducer and the intake. The EGR tube is about the easiest issue to take care of when using this intake and the rest get progressively more annoying and difficult.
- The Stratus thermostat housing is different then that of the Neon and it will require you to use the Stratus one otherwise if the Neon one is used I think the holes have the water neck either facing towards the passengers side of the car or towards the intake.
- The coolant temp sensor is in a different location on this intake which requires you to lengthen the wires over to the sensor and the sensor is different too which requires you to use a sensor from a Neon or splice in the Stratus plug to make work (I went with using the Neon plug).
- Next you will notice that the Map sensor is different and in a completely different location. The Map sensor on the Stratus is just a Map sensor and that is it and the intake air temp is a completely different sensor located on the back of the plenum between runners 2 and 3. The Neon Map sensor is a combined Map and intake air temp sensor so you will have to install the Neon Map in there. All I did to make the Map lines longer was to trace them in the harness and remove the wires that run down between injectors 2 & 3 and reroute them into the wires going to the starter motor & throttlebody. You can either leave the intake temp sensor alone in the manifold or you can do like I did and install a hose barb to run vacuum lines to the BOV, Wastegate, and Boost Gauge.
- Just when you think things were starting to get easier you will find out that the throttlebody and bracket is not the same on the Stratus engine as it is on the Neon and the Neon one can't even be made to work. Where the Neon has the IAC that dumps straight into the intake after the TB and gasket the Stratus one does some funky thing and then is dumped back into the intake with a passage that is cast into the TB. The only upside about the TB is that atleast it uses the same TPS sensor plug that the Neon uses but on the downside the IAC sensor has a different design and uses a different plug as compared to the Neon. So you will have to splice in the IAC wire from a 1998 Model Year or older (if the TB is used on a Stratus after 1998 then you should be ok to use those wires in the harness).
- The hard coolant lines on the Neon are not even going to work because they get in the way of the intake to the point where you can't even install the intake. Your choices are either to run all new coolant hoses from the heater core, build some brackets, and find a way to keep the tranny from rubbing holes in the rubber hose and the EGR tube from burning through it. Or you can find the Stratus hardlines which are similar to those of the Neon but move the coolant lines up and out of the way of the EGR tube. At first I was going to run the new line and just build the brackets, sleeve the hoses in convoluted tubing to keep it from rubbing, and hope that the lines stay away from the EGR tube but I found the hardline on a junkyard car and decided to clean it up and use it instead for less headaches.
- The last thing to worry about is the radiator and radiator hoses which will probably stop most from trying this intake in their Neons. The passengers side radiator fan and the upper water neck will not clear the intake and manifold plain and simple. The only solution that I found was to use a modified C&R Racing Neon radiator (modified by C&R Racing) with the fan bracket moved as far to the drivers side as possible and the upper water neck centered above the fan. The hoses that I am using on this radiator are the Lower OEM Neon hose and a Gates Hose EC-R 20893 for the upper one that runs under the runners of the intake and over to the thermostat housing. Once you install this radiator you will need to install an external tranny cooler for your ATX (if you have one) since the radiator does not have the tranny cooler built into the core like the OEM one has. Then you have to find a way to wire the new Spal fan into the harness where the OEM fans hooked into if you wanted to ratain the computer turning on and off the cooling fans.