dieselJon

My dad has a 90 spirit. Running real well for a few years then going to work after jury duty, the timing belt went south. Got that fixed but when we took it off the trailer we tore the gas line out from underneath it So after replacing the belt and the gas line, he drove for a couple of more months. Speedometer was funky, worked for a week or two then it would die. No biggy. Then we thought it blew a head gasket cause the PCV valve spewed white smoke. Took the head off and we were effectively using 3 of the 4 pistons. There were almost no rings on one of the pistons. To place gaskets and rings, $250. Boneyard engine, $350. Pocketbook, money-less. Got almost 25-27 mpg before all of this.

Jon

Mexstan

A couple of lifetimes ago my wife drove an Omni around town. It was not a bad little car. The block and lower end I seem to remember was made by VW and the head by Chrysler. The block even had the letters "VW" in the casting. Very easy engines to work on. The head bolts are not hex head bolts, but are internal splines. Snap-on and others sell the tool for this.

bigredBCS

SWEET! I WAS RIGHT!!!!!

Toto

The wife had a Dodge Shadow/Plymouth Sundance.
What can I say..
Did not have A/C...good thing because Dodge A/C did not last long anyway.
Needed wrist pins and tranny just before the warranty ran out at about 100000 kilometers.(2.2L)
A very basic car.
Some reliable, some not.
OK on gas, but not stellar.
They make a good beater because they are dirt cheap for parts.
If you are not expecting too much they are OK.
You can buy 'em cheap and if you have a catastrophic failure, just tow 'em to a wrecker and get another one...or not.

BTW you could also get a K car with a 3.0 L Mitsubishi engine.
Quite peppy, but the early ones...pre 1992? had problems with valve guides dropping...later fixed.
I did have a 93 Grand Caravan and had absolutely no problems with the 3.0 L.
Air and tranny went though.

Very early Omni's had VW engine as mentioned by a previos post, but went to a 2.2 L shortly after.
Could also get a 2.2 turbo, 2.5 four and as mentioned 3.0L six.

zulusafari

The Dodge Omni with a 2.2L Turbo was a screamer! I watched one rally cross and it was pretty cool!

My sister had a Horizon for several years during college. Good car, worked pretty well. They had an aluminum bumper that was fastened to steel supports, with steel hardware that always corroded through, allowing the bumper to just fall off! Every one I se now has some sort of large plastic plates clamping the bumper to the brackets, or some piece of steel tubing welded on instead. As stated, they were only OK on fuel. I got roughly the same mileage with my '92 Spirit as my sister got with her Horizon, and I could haul a lot more!!

My Saturn work commuter just turned 116k, and is having some issues -- maybe it is time to find another old K-car and relive my youth!!

srt20

That was a 1.7 liter engine .

zulusafari

It always amazed me, how people put down the Omni/Horizon as a copy-cat Rabbit or Golf. Of course it was! We needed fuel efficient cars, and VW already had the idea down, and helped us out. The PT cruiser looks astonishingly like a Citroen I saw in the early '90s. Everyone accepts that the FJ-40 was a copy of the early ******. I just wish we had TDI versions of the econoboxes -- a diesel neon would have been cool!

Rampage1967

Just to clear things up, The European version of the Onmi/Horizon were out before the Rabbit. If you do your research you will find that the Rabbit was a copy of the Omni/Horizon. The rabbit just made it over here first.

pick

[QUOTE=zulusafari;1509018]The Dodge Omni with a 2.2L Turbo was a screamer! I watched one rally cross and it was pretty cool!

yeah the little turbo Omni's are a blast. Want to talk about a sleeper. Ask the Viper up at IRP a few years back.

96_12V

Funny how $3.39/gal 87 octane gasoline brings up a discussion like this?!

I wonder if some of those soccer moms driving Cadillac Escalade ESV's may start fantisizing about the Chevy Chevette's thier parents raised them in...and how they traded to a Citation and later a K-car...

Oh, for the simple life again....!

74dart

Yea my sister in law is looking at getting a surbuan with the 8.1l in it. It will dfitnally hurt to fill that thing up twice a week.

belfert

Wasn't the Dodge Spirit a different platform than a K car?

I thought the Aries was the K car?

Brian Elfert

74dart

The aries was a k car. The spirit was called a AA body but it was built on the EEK platform which is the Extended K car platform.

zulusafari

Yeah, what he said. The similarities under the body were astounding. The 2.5L was a stroked 2.2, and the 3 spd transmission sounded and shifted the same. I even compared CV axles between an Aries and my Spirit, and they were the same Citroen design, length, and spline count.

Remember the ultra-cheap "America" models? That Russian comedian used to do the advertisements on TV. Absolute stipped down models, dirt cheap!