I’ve got an 04 in getting ready to remove to put another in. Was looking at the service manual(Haynes) which is saying the convertible has to come out the bottom. Is that true. I thought I had seen somewhere you could remove the grill and radiator support and come out the front

 

There might be a thread over at the Chrysler Sebring/200 convertible club website where somebody did it that way. The factory shop manual calls for dropping it out the bottom. BTW, during the '04 model year, there was a significant change in the engine control system. Make sure your old engine and new one are of the same design. The plugs on the engine control computer must be the same. If they are different, you'll have problems making it work.

 

Can that be checked by vin or should I just look at the ecm and compare

 

The plugs on the ecm are very different.

 

Found some interesting stuff. Title says 04. Date of manufacture 2/03. The other one is 6/04. Major different on ecm. Question is are the engines the same. As in could I swap the engine harness and put the engine in the older car

 

If you took the whole harness and ecm with the engine, it would probably work but you'll need to have the ecm re-programmed with the recipient vehicle VIN and mileage. I have no idea how you would do that, and services that exchange ecm's over the internet may not be able to do that for you since the ecm may be incompatible with that VIN.

The engine will physically bolt in, as it's basically the same engine externally, but the control system is different with different sensors and some sensors located in different positions. It's quite odd that the earlier car would be manufactured in 2/03 and be considered a 2004 on the title. Are you sure that's not 12/03?

 

you can do it that way it is a lot of work and a very tight fit advise after evacuating compressor you remove it, and the alternator, serpentine belt and tensioner. There is a lot more to do to get things out of the way but Canberra done