97 Dodge Avenger ES build in Finland

[Flatlinerocker]

Heya's from Finland to this great forum!

I just bought a DSM yesterday (or what I think is a DSM, since it's got DSM badging in the engineroom), or actually traded my old motorbike for it. It's a ~1997 Dodge Avenger ES with 2.0 and manual with what I gather is almost all the options.

I assume these cars are more common in USA? They're definitely not common here. I've actually never seen one of these before and it took me a while to figure out what it is, since these cars were never imported to Finland and I've only seen a few Mitsu Eclipses around (they're very popular tuning cars over here). I believe the history of the car is private import to Germany and then after some 10 years the same to Finland.

So... plans are to build it into a somewhat quirky daily driver to match what I've got as my other cars ('69 AMC Rebel SST 2D Hardtop 360+A727 and '70 AMC Hornet SST 2D 343+M12) that I've built from ground up previously. So yea, this is a bit different, but I like all good looking cars with a character...

So here's the first shot from yesterday night once I got it home.

Here's a few pics from this morning, as you can see it's in fairly good condition, no real rust evident and even if paint isn't the best it shows pretty good.

It does need a good wash & wax...

Interior has all the bells and whistles that I can think of. Leather all around, AC, sunroof, all electrics toys, good sound system (aftermarket) and so fourth. Only thing I can't figure out is the yellow/graphite color vs. the fire red exterior. I'll likely look into changing it a bit, but we'll see.

First issues I've noted was a couple yellow warning lights (I got the car cheap so I didn't expect it to be perfect), out of which the first one was just a wiper reservoir empty warning but the second on is the infamous 'check engine' light. One of the main reasons for my registration here But hey, I'll do some searches and see what's what. Hopefully it's just a bad O2 sensor or something like that


Looking forward to contributing to this forum with a project story and using the search actively.... Let me know if I'm in the wrong place, since I actually couldn't find 'Avenger' in the DSM list at registration...

 

[young97 gst]

I used to have a 97 Avenger ES. They are nice cars. Mine was the 6 cylinder model. This was o i'd say 12 years ago. Then I know they didn't have a lot of after market parts for it, today i'd say they don't either. But for your car being a four banger. They do. Your car technically isn't a DSM beings how DSM's are Eclipse, Talons, and Eagles. But no worries because the 4 cylinder engine in your car is the 2.0 420a engine found in some, if not most Eclipse's. So you can still refer here about most of your engine questions. Good luck and nice car!