New member from Akron Ohio, 2001 Saturn Sl1
 

Hey all. I cam across you guys on saturnfans.com. I was looking into my magically disappearing oil problem (doesnt burn OR leak!?) on my 2001 Sl1. But hey, at least it gets over 30 mpg. Does any1 know of any ways to fix my oil problem?:o Great site BTW:thumbup:

The S-series cars are known to burn oil. Something about the design of the piston rings, IIRC. Saturn will tell you that "yes, they do burn some oil, but as long as it's not 'excessive', it's not a problem" (It's YOUR problem). There are worse things to go wrong with a car. 219k miles on a 2000 SL2 in five years and the only thing wrong was that it burned oil.

I'm on my 4th Saturn. My 2000 burned a quart every 3,000 miles. Though on a trip from Michigan to Florida, I had to add TWO quarts when I filled up (that's about 400 miles). That was back in my lead foot driving days. Seems the faster you drive (higher RPMS and load) the faster they burn oil. My 2002 SC2 was a little better. Half a quart every 3k miles. The 2002 SL2 I drive now hasn't needed oil added at all. Oil level is full at 3k when I get an oil change. Been that way the 16,000 miles I've driven it from 44k to 60k. (knocks on wood). So, in my experience, 3 out of 4 do burn oil. Cherish the rare one that doesn't burn oil.

"Don't be a dipstick... check your dipstick!"

PS: my first Saturn, a 1998 SL2, didn't burn oil either from 0 to 75k miles until I wrecked it beyond repair. I didn't have that one long enough (a year and a half) to experience the phenomenon that is an oil-burning Saturn until its replacement, the 2000 SL2.

PS to the PS: When you say it doesn't burn oil or leak oil... you mean you don't get blue smoke like the mosquito foggers I see from time to time? My cars never belched blue smoke either, but they burned oil. If the oil level goes down and there's no external leak onto your driveway, then it's leaking into the cylinder(s) past the rings or valve guides and getting burned up along with the air and gasoline.

Oil doesn't just disappear, does it?

A bad oil burner would be my parents' Ford Escort wagon. It blew a quart thru the PCV valve every fifty miles soaking the breather filter and air filter. Now that's bad! I remember that return trip home from Wisconsin well.

Saturn and oil consumption
 

Welcome to gassavers. I thought I should say hello since I have n 01 SL1 also. Mine uses very little oil at 90k. Not too much gas either. I guess I am more lucky than I realized.

Ernie

How about some more details. How much oil and what type are you using?

Welcome to the site. lots of Saturns.

Welcome to GS!
 

Welcome to GS.

I'm also from the Akron area (Barberton) originally.

I can't help with the oil problem, but once it's fixed, hopefully the site can offer some guidance on Fuel Economy.

Good luck with those Northeastern Ohio roads...

RH77

Golf3r -

Welcome to the site. I have been watching my oil, but I don't think it burns too a noticeable degree. When I transitioned from a 15 mile street to a 35 mile freeway commute, I think the car burned oil at the beginning. I usually just check it once a week. I don't think it is leaking onto my driveway (a little tranny fluid is, though :( ). Oil leaks are probably best solved at saturnfans.com, but we'll help you with MPG.

Do you see black soot on the muffler tip? I do. At first I thought it was just because I was running rich. But maybe that's a sign of burning oil?!?!?!

CarloSW2

An oil leak story...

My mom's 1996 SL2 at 103k leaked oil like crazy. She had to add a quart at every fill-up and put down kitty litter in the driveway to soak up the oily mess. And running rough with poor gas mileage, the fill ups were more frequent. I discovered the problem was a leaking cam cover gasket. The o-rings in the spark plug wells were shot. All four spark plugs and wires were covered in oil. #1 #2 plug wells had an inch of oil in each!

Replaced the gasket, o-rings, plugs, and wires and it runs great again with no leaks and much better gas mileage. It may be burning oil so I urged her to continue to check the oil at every gas up, and she does.

Also replaced the front brake rotors that day because the non-ABS brake pedal was pulsating and the steering wheel shaking under hard braking. Good brakes now too.

David -

I've never had extreme oil leak problems like that, but I can never get rid of my brake pulsation, so I posted this on saturnfans.com :

Favorite Rotor + Brake Pad combo?
https://www.saturnfans.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93089

My conclusion is that the next time around, I will probably go with the Brembo + Hawk HPS pads.

I also heard that there is an old trick to calibrating your rear drum brakes. What I heard is that if you roll the car down a hill backwards and hit the brakes (or the parking brake, I can't remember!!!), the rear drums will magically realign themselves.

CarloSW2

its nice to know its a common problem, just wish it wasnt happening in the first place:o . I just got my first oil changed after i took the car over, and it hadnt had an oil change in 8,000 miles apparently, which isnt good at all. I told the Mr. Tire guy about the problem and he recommended a synthetic oil the next time to help clean it out, is this true or is he scamming me:rolleyes: . BTW, there are no dummy lights on, the car gets good mileage (it only has 63k), and I see no soot or anything on or in the tailpipe. The guys at saturnfans recommended an MMO piston soak. Besides the oil problem i have had no problems with the car. It does vibrate and shake violently, but I think its due to a bad top motor mount, which isnt too hard or expensive to fix myself. Hopefully I can iron out these problems. thanks.

Oh, by the by, does any1 know if the Turbomag (myturbomagnet.net) magnets that go on your fuel line do anything, along with that vortex shapend metal insert that you put in your air intake? I heard it improves gas mileage. Oh, and i also cant seem to find a nice intake for my saturn, no one seems to sell any, go figure:rolleyes: . thanks again:thumbup:

Golf3r -

I don't think he is scamming you, but I keep getting mixed messges about synthetic. When I used to go to my Saturn dealer, they said that if your car is old and has always used dyno-oil, then you should stay with that. But other people say synthetic is always better.

8000 miles between oil changes on a Saturn sounds bad unless those were really "mild" miles.

Since the engine is pretty young, I would say you can move to synthetic.

Everything I have heard on these points to a scam. I do have a fuel magnet that I attach to the fuel line (I got it for $20, well below my sucker limit), and I can't tell if it does anything. I think you could make your own for cheaper, that is also stronger. I may go here and get some of these down the line :

https://www.amazingmagnets.com/
Attachment 336

I would need to find some whose inner diameter match the diameter of the fuel line. However, I am such a non-car person that I am loathe to remove the fuel line to do this.

Everyone here says the vortex generators are also a scam because all they do is restrict air flow. They have always been priced above my sucker limit of $50, so I have never tried one. There are homemade ones on ebay for $20, however.

One common gimmick of these things is that they do real testing, but they tune up the car in addition to installing the gizmo. This way they can claim better MPG in a "real" test when actually they are pulling a bait and switch where they give their gizmo credit for what the tune-up did to the car's MPG.

CarloSW2

Hello -

Ooooohhh, I just went to www.myturbomagnet.com . Only $8.95 for one? That's really cheap! Must ... not ... give ... in ... to ... scam ... ;) !

CarloSW2

Carlos just for you. How much would you pay to increase FE by 6%. If you send Matt a $14.95(under your sucker limit) paypal I'll ship you this special tape that will increase FE by 6%. But wait there's more. I'll include 2 spares so you can put it on all your cars and a GS bumper sticker. That's a $ 55.00 value for only $14.95 act now while supplies last.:D

Synthetic oil will not help clean the engine. There are no magical cleaners in synthetic oil. synthetic can keep a engine cleaner than with dino if its used all of the time.
The best thing out there right now for cleaning is Auto RX, It does an excellent job of cleaning the inside of an engine, including the ring pack which might help with oil consumption.

zpiloto -

Don't tell me, the offer is only good while supplies last, right?!?!?!?!? Or worse, it ends in 20 minutes!!!!!

Oh the humanity!!!!!!

CarloSW2

hehe thanks for the replies. It just looked so good, and the feedback for the guy who sells them (turbomag) on ebay was 98% positive, and a lot of people reported improvements. go figure:rolleyes: Anyway, It think im gonna go with synthetic next time. Ill get a good intake if i can find one and try out the PVC catch can thing and see how that improves things. the other changes are purely cosmetic. other than that im too worried ill f*ck something up if i mess with the engine (mmo soak) so ill just see how the oil consumption goes this time. BTW the miles that were put on were not easy. Stop and go in Columbus traffic as well as mostly city driving, and 4 trips both ways between Columbus and Akron (about 2 hours). The previous owner bought a 96 geo metro P.O.S. (no offence to metro owners) with 88k b4 the saturn. She drove that thing at least 5 times from akron to st augustine florida. The thing had 170K when she junked it, and it had no problems whatsoever during those 90K miles, except that it shook at high speeds.:p She treated it the same way she treated the saturn (no oil change for 9K etc.). I'm definantely not going to do that though:) . We'll see how it goes.

Welcome to the site! I had a '97 SL that used a bit of oil. I saw on saturnfans that you shouldn't use an aftermarket PCV valve or it could cause oil usage. I had bout a PCV valve from Autozone but I never had a chance to go to Saturn to get an OEM when I found this out; the timing chain broke and stripped the threads out of the block for the timing chain guide. I now have a '99 SL2 that, at 105k+, doesn't use a drop of oil and I'm running 0W 20 in it.

Golf3r -

I like Wolfman's sig on saturnfans.com :

Old Saturns never die, people KILL them, so check your damn oil!

Maybe that should be printed somewhere in my Saturn's cabin.

CarloSW2

Thanks Carlos for the reminder! It's been awhile since I've been on saturnfans and couldn't remember if that was Wolfman's phrase or someone else's.

Welcome to the site! Fellow Saturn owner here, 2002 SL1 automatic. As to the oil issue, I'm with the others, just keep checking it every week and add when needed, my last SL1 (a 2001) used a quart between changes, the current one hasn't used any yet. Keep up with the oil changes and go easy on the poor thing, the SL1's only have a 100HP engine, so great FE, but no power :D

I can attest to that, the engine sounds like its gonna explode if you push it (not that i do:rolleyes: ) and even then the car is still lumbering up the MPH slowly. We'll see how long this car holds out as Im looking to keep it for about 7 years, ill cross my fingers:p . BTW Odie, I saw that you are planning on adding cruise to your SL1, which is almost identical to my SL1. Have you got any quotes on it? I was thinking about doing it along with power windows/locks, but people say that doing this will end up costing me more than what the car is worth (about $7,000). Does any1 know if this is easy to DIY as the kits online are only $150 with full instructions, and the only thing i would be worried about (after reading the instructions) is finding a wire with constant 12 volt power going through it, and splicing it etc. I have no experience working on cars, but i thought, what the hell, if i own the car and its my first one why not learn?:D

I know of a wire that has the 12V you're looking for and it's in very close proximity to where you would mount the cruise control. There is a solid pink wire going to each of the fuel injectors that are hot as long as the key is in the run position.

Golf3r -

Also, if you *don't* have a sunroof, you may still have the fuse for it. I found this to be true on my SW2. It is located on the front passenger side of the radio/AC console, behind the vertical plastic panel that you can just pull off. On the back of the plastic panel, there is a map of what the fuses are for. On my SW2, it's a 15 AMP blue fuse on the top row. It is *only* active when the ignition is turned on. I intend to try to use this as a "no splice" way of using my electrical system.

Diamondlarry, what do you think?

CarloSW2

Awesome:thumbup: Ill have to check that out tomorrow. I have a quick question though, how do i use this fuse for power to the cruise control. Do i run the wires behind the fuse or something:confused: Hopefully I can get into my car 2morrow as its snowing like crazy right now. Damn lake-effect.

Golf3r -

You will think I am super smart now. I just found this at Pep-Boys for $9 :

https://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=071-585
Attachment 338

It plugs right in to the same place that your fuse is.

Also, you have it even better because in the same location, you ALSO have a fuse for Cruise control! You can use the power that was intended for the Saturn cruise control. Here is how I think it would connect :

Cruise control fuse location -> Mini Add-A-Circuit -> power to your after-market cruise control -> connection to ground.

I have cruise control so it didn't occur to me that this would be available.

Question for RH77 : On your cruise control, didn't you midify it so that it was "smart" FE-wise? Didn't you limit the maximum throttle that cruise control could go so that the car would not try to add power going uphill?

I am not car-savvy (but I do lots of homework), so I would appreciate someone else chiming in to correct any errors I may be making.

CarloSW2

There are cheaper (few cent each) fuse bridges if you want to look around for them on ebay or something.

Ah yes, the CCTLS
 

CFG-

The "CCTLS": Cruise-Control Throttle-Limiting System. The cruise control - control box is essentially an electric motor attached to a rotating cog attached to the throttle cable to pull it and open the throttle. I governed how far the cog rotates by wedging 2 allen-wrenches in the path of the cog and secured it with some zip-ties.

I found the allen wrenches allowed the choice of different sizes down to the millimeter to limit the throttle position to an exact limit -- in my case 21% via the ScanGauge.

Faults: The CC notices that it can't function properly, usually on the first set attempt and cuts the system and cannot be re-set. If the switch is turned off and on, it can be reset, and on the second try -- it will generally catch. If it catches, it holds >90% of the time.

Operation: It will hold a thottle position first, then if the set-speed is reached, downhill or level, the speed backs-off the throttle. Uphill, it will hold the throttle and brush-off speed instead of eating-up FE. So far it works well in light traffic, long distance situations. It helps with the psychological aspect of inadvertently holding a hill at speed or even accelerating with traffic. On mine, I'll get up to 5-over the limit and set it (5+ is so it doesn't engine-brake on the downhills so much). If you let it do what it wants, you can end up going 55 in a 70 uphill, but on level/downhill it picks back up, for example. Definitely helps with FE on an automatic basis.

Sorry I'm replying so late ;) I plan on doing it myself, I was an auto mechanic for 7 years, so it shouldn't be a major issue :D When I do, I'll document with my digital camera and post the wiring diagram. Then all other SL1 owners can have cruise too! :)