2.0 liter neon???

My dad is working on a 97' that had the water pump lock up a blow the timing belt. Do neons have valve issues when this happens or do they have enough clearence???

Nope, interference engine. Sometimes when this happens the valves are toast, other times people say they're still usable. The water pump/timing belt is a maintinance item on the neons and you should not just let it go until it dies because you could be looking at a costly fix depending on how bad things are hurt. Should really be done every 60-80k miles on an interference engine IMO.

You can either pull the head and check it out, or put a new t-belt and water pump in, then do a compression test on it and hope the results are acceptable.

Not one of Chrysler's better ideas.....making an economy engine an interference engine. Even worse, the tensionrs and/or water pumps have been know to fail before the belt. When the tensioner fails, it takes out the belt which then destroys valves.

My son had a '97 2.0 4 valve neon and lost the water pump. I installed 8 new intake valves, water pump and timing belt. Seems to me it was about $3-400 in parts. Not all the valves looked bad but they'd all kissed the pistons so they all got changed. Dave