Just wondering if anyone here has any experiance about theese motors, looking at a good deal on a winter beater that has this engine in it. I know they come in alot of cars 2g eclipse(wich is car i may get) neons, avengers, & sebrings. Just wondering if theres anything i should check out with the engine and if anyone has one there running now or if anyone has run one let me know what you think of the engine . Ps i know its slow lol so you dont gotta tell me that 
mine blew up at 39k miles :down:
damn that sucks the car im looking at has twice the miles. Was there any warning signs before it blew up? Was the engine modded at all or anything?
i bought a 2g with a blown up 420a, put a new one in it and am either gonna sell it, or keep it as a daily driver.
I changed a head gasket on one… sucks to work on…
got one blown up at 110k
i put 10 lbs of boost to mine for like 40k miles and never blew it up…sold it with 110k on it…broke the tranny though…i think that was about the only problem i really had.
I’ve put about 100,000 miles on 3 different neons and never really had any trouble with the basic engine aside from the headgaskets.
Most of the ones out there now have probably had the headgasket changed since the new leak-free MLS type gaskets came out for them around this time in 1998.
well thanks for all the input, the car im looking at has 88k on it. Is there anything in particular i should check or look out for?
They will last you a long time if you take care of them. Only real thing to look out for is running low on oil. Run it low on oil and you will spin a rod bearing with the quickness. Otherwise, swapping to the MLS HG gets rid of an annoying minor oil leak, and swapping out to the PT Cruiser 2.4L lifters will gets rid of the ticking. Once you add some boost it will still run reliably as long as you tune it right and keep it under 10lbs on stock internals.