Bought a Saturn
 

Just drove home with my 2000 Saturn. You can see some more details about it in my garage. One thing I have noted is that this car has LOTS of excess power.

Just curious, my car is (on the title) an SSL. I assume this means it is the SL1. I thought it was kind of odd. Did the change the name from SL1 to SL at some point down the road?

Congrats - my wife had one. It drove at speed so effortlessly. When we had twins we had to drive tandem with the baby seats on the right side fore and aft and us behind each other. It was the only way we we could fit until we got the Accord. Other than the legroom, and the plume d'huile that affected some of them, it was a solid yet kickable car! My buddy's had his for ages. He carries multiple ladders on it and entirely too many spools of cable in it.

Sweet! How do you plan to figure it in to your driving with the old boat?

Fourthbean -

Muchas Felicitaciones! This way you can keep the miles off your Classic Chevy.

CarloSW2

Congrats on a fine choice!;) The SL and SL1 were two different trim levels.

How does this impact our FETC team? We now have 2 SL's.

Yep, get to park my Chevy now. Will probably list it on Craigslist for some insanely high price to see if anyone will bite in the next few months.

Ahh, didn't realize there were 3 trim levels diamondlarry. Thanks. I changed my garage entry to just read SL.

Jim, I guess we will have to share the fame of 40MPG on our team! :) I will have to read through your mods and pick your brain about what works and what doesn't.

There's a fourth trim level, SL sport. Muhahaha! I have one. Its rare and collectable, NOT. Its an SL with lots of SL2 niceness. Basically when production ceased the put all the leftovers on these cars.

Nice!
Standard or auto? Put that in the Garage page for us.

You're gonna get great FE in that car!

A freind of mine was telling me about his 02 and how it had bumpers the same color of the car and yet wasn't an SL2. From what he said having the black bumpers was a sign of having something other than an SL2.

It is a Manual, I will add that to the garage.

The black bumper indicates that its not an sl2. You could get the sl or sl1 with black bumpers. Being an SL usually indicates a basic utilitarian car. An SL1 however, would indicate basic options like air, tape, p/s, better interior trim.

I meant to agree with you lovemysan, though my post didn't read like that. I was saying that I think my friend got a similar deal to what you have.

I'm glad my SL basic option car did come with air :) No cruise control though (that I can find), which I can deal with. I have gone without up till now.

I have a high idle ('round 1200rpm), after perusing the saturnfans.com forum I am going to try and pick up a coolant sensor from a Saturn dealer on the way home tonight.

No, I meant: are we breaking the rules by having two on the same team?

Feel free to pick my brain. My engine has been feeling like it's running rough lately (after enhacing my HAI), but it has Bosch Platinum plugs in it (which my wife bought a few hundred miles ago; Saturns ruin them after a few hundred miles) and an aftermarket upper torque axis mount which is several thousand miles old.

Does anyone else notice more vibrations due to the lack of power per revolution caused by the HAI?

thats a nice lookin bel-air you got there. i saw a super clean impala today (67 or 68 i think) it was baby blue, looked like it just rolled off the showroom floor (and then had radial tires put on).

Jim, I don't see anything in the rules about two cars of the same model. So we should be good to go.

ezeedee, that picture is deceiving. It was taken a couple of years ago right after I got the car running, it looks much worse now with no hubcaps, faded paint, not washed in months, seat in back completely exploded, etc. lol

Thanks for the props on it though, I have enjoyed it as a car.

After talking to the guy at the Saturn dealership I am going to do a tune up before anything else (Now why didn't I think of that?).

I am changing to the midnight shift this week, so I will be staying up all night tonight doing schoolwork and working on my car. Hopefully I can have the tune up done and a new starter in by the morning :).

Well, I got the starter changed. Wasn't near as much of a hassle as it was made out to be, or maybe I was reading about older Saturns taking 5 hours to change. I had mine out in about 30 minutes not counting the time it took to find the stupid extensions to reach the top bolt.

I also changed the spark plugs for some NGK's per the Saturn dealership suggestion. Idles smoother though the old ones (can't remember the name but weren't NGK) were a bit burnt (white).

The wires been replaced?

Not by me, I was thinking about that after I was installing the plugs. I will be going back for an air filter though, this one looks a tad on the dirty side. Though I have never looked at an air filter like this before. One side is quite a bit "browner" than the other.

Our spark leads became noticeable on our Saturn when accelerating in top gear at lower RPMs. It would miss and bog.

About the spark wires. OEM wires should be "packard" they'll say it on the wires. I've seen these wires go 200k and still work fine. A good friend of mine has a 1993 S10 2.8 with 215k on it running original wires. There very good wires IMO.

All you have to do is be gentle with them and do an ohms check. They should come in around 1000ohms per foot of resistance. A dead wire is considered 5000ohms per ft. I recently tested my wires on my saturn they came in at 1700-2800 ohms for all of them. When I tuned up that s10 4 years ago @185k I tested the new wires and the old packard wires(OEM). The packards had less resistance than the new autozone wires so we returned the autozone wires.

With that being said check the stock wires before you replace them, replace the plugs with the OEM NGK's. NGK BKR4E-11 is the part number. Orielly's can order them for you for around $2 a plug.

I specifically asked for NGK plugs when I got new ones yesterday. Thanks for the tip on spark plug wires, I will get my ohm meter and and do a quick test today. They shouldn't be bad as this engine is only at 85K, but I will test the anyhow.

Mine are at 80k also. Let me know what you come up with I'd be interested to know the results

I wish my Saturn was only at 85k. Unfortunately, 2 years of 1 - 1.5 hour (one way) commutes have it at 113k. Bleh.

Ouch, you will hit 200k in no time at all Jim. I have a good 22 mile one way commute, however I only have to go up there 3-4 times a week. Which saves a lot.

I just tested my wires. Farthest plug was at .6 m ohms (Do you know what the m stands for?). Other three were 4-5 k ohms (Assuming the k is thousand). I did not see a brand name on the plug wires, just said high heat resistant wires. So I guess they aren't OEM.

I was thinking about having Oreilly's get both the in-house brand and the ones that cost twice as much (Borg-Warner) on the counter and I could just run a quick ohm test. Would that be smart or should I just go for the expensive ones?

I could also get them at rockauto.com (bosch brand) for 23 shipped. I don't usually buy auto parts online as I usually need them immediately. However in this case I could wait a week.

Congrats Fourthbean! I'm surprised that you are surprised at the excess power. Mine has been nicknamed the gutless wonder. These Saturns are horribly under-powered, probably why they get good MPG. Of course I am biased, I went from a 260 horsepower Honda Civic Si that would shred it's tires in the first 3 gears and topped out at over 160mph.

Take care of it and change the oil! :D

I haven't been spoiled by excessively overpowered cars. I am sure I would "realize" how underpowered it is if I ever got in and drove something "real" ha ha.

What would American's do if we suddenly only had 20HP to run around on! :)

I would order some OEM wires online. I do not buy wires from the parts stores, they don't seem to last as well. It sounds like your getting 6000 ohms from your longest wire. That would be about 2500ohms a foot. I wouldn't change them yet. I would order a new set of "packards" and store them until the current wires were unsatisfactory. I think the next time I'm at the pick and pull I'm going to find a good extra set for a $1.00

As for underpowered I don't think so. Theres plenty of underpowered cars that are dogs. 0-60 in 10 seconds is livable. My brothers 3.5 maxima is very quick but I can drive them back to back and still like my car just as well.

I bought the wires before seeing your next post. After doing another test of the wires the .6m (600 thousand ohms) was false. I was getting 7500 or so out of that one. The 1foot long short cable was getting 4500.

I got oreilly auto parts to get both boxes out, the in house brand and the "platinum" brand. The in house measured 4500 or so for the long cable, 800 for the platinum ones. 500 for the short cable of platinums.

I went ahead and replaced them with the platinum (20 instead of 15 dollars or something like that) as I thought that was a pretty big difference.

Well, I have replaced the plugs, wires, air filter, and starter. The idle did go down. It sits at maybe 8-900 when coasting at 30-35MPH. And will go down to 4-500 when at a stop. There is also no shake when idling at a stop at 400 whereas before there was a shake idling at 650 at a stop.

I am very happy to say the least :). Now for an ignition kill switch so my locks don't unlock and lock every time I shut the engine off for a coast ;).

There is a way to make the engine idle at 400-500 even while coasting. When the engine is fully warmed and it is idling, unplug the idle-speed control and the engine will always idle at the same speed whether you're moving or not. If you do this, you will have to ever so slightly press the gas pedal when you start the engine when it's cold. I did this with my SL2 last winter and had no significant problems.

Interesting tidbit of knowledge. Would that work on a 95 sw2?

Thanks for the tip, I may do that if it continues to bother me.

It seems like it would work since it is basically the same engine as mine.

Does something like this trigger a check engine light???

I never had it happen to me but my son, who drives the car now, has had it happen only once or twice. He just reset it with the Scanguage and didn't have any more problems.

I have had mine set a code for too slow of an idle a couple times but it has not been a regular problelm.

Well, I have driven my car another 60 miles or so. The idle when put in neutral at highway speeds drops to ~600, jumps to 1100 for a second, and then drops back down to ~600 for good. Not sure if this means my idle controller is actually bad. I will leave it as is for now, doesn't bother me :)

Well, its wasting fuel while it messes around, I'd say. There was a "still bad mpg" thread on Saturnforums where the IAC was the problem child causing bad mpg