Yes, the Neon is now having more problems. It has had a stalling problem ever since I got it back together in the spring, but it would only be when the engine was cold, particularly when the engine was cold but the car was warm (like sitting in the sun). Today it was worse. It stalled on me once with a fully-warm engine in traffic. After pulling into a parking lot I could get it restarted. Later I started up the car, and didn't even make it a mile before it just stopped working completely, this time as I was accelerating away from a light. I couldn't get it restarted, so off to the dealer it went.
Several hours later I get a call from the dealer, saying their equipment can't talk to the PCM, and I'll need a new one. Unfortunately the new one is on the other side of the country (odd how the parts I need are always on the other coast), and would be around $400ish. Fortunately, however, I have the Mopar PCM that one of the previous owners bought. I'll be driving that up to the dealer tomorrow morning for them to try, and hopefully that will work.
It might actually fix all of the stalling problems, as I can kind of see how that might explain the situation. After talking to Evan, he said the PCM on his Dodge Spirit ('92 maybe?) was replaced at least once, maybe twice, as it would overheat and fail. They have very little passive cooling, so I can sort of understand this.
I'll have to start running premium fuel, but it sounds like there's a decent power gain to be had, and it's a lot cheaper than buying a new PCM. At 25mpg and a $0.20/gal price difference between regular and premium, I'd have to drive 50k miles for it to be worthwhile to buy a new stock PCM. There's no way the rest of the car will last that long. :-P
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