Chrysler 420A

Chrysler's 2.0 four — the 420A — in the Sebring and the second-generation Mitsubishi Eclipse.

⚑ Its whole significance is what it REPLACED. The first-generation Eclipse ran Mitsubishi's turbocharged 4G63, one of the most modified engines ever built. The second generation's base cars got this instead — a naturally aspirated Chrysler engine in a Mitsubishi body — and thirty years of forum results written about "the Eclipse engine" are about the other one.

So establish which engine is fitted before reading anything. It is the single commonest way to waste a day on one of these cars.

On its own terms it is unremarkable and durable: chain-driven, port-injected, and cheap to keep. Its complaints are a crank position sensor that gives an intermittent no-start, ignition coils, and a timing chain guide that rattles at high mileage.

The 4G63 has its own place in this catalogue and nothing about the two engines transfers — not the parts, not the tuning, and not the reputation.