TWO CYLINDER SATURN, bad idea.
 

I removed the rocker arms from cylinders 1 and 4 on my Saturn and drove it for several miles. In 4th gear it would easily go up to 70 mph. In 5th it could just barely pull 60-65 mph. Acceleration was slow. Actually I had an SUV holding me up on the freeway on ramp :) . I had to use almost twice the RPM I normally do. That seems reasonable. Since I was running on 1/2 the engine I just doubled the scangauge mileage numbers. Except for limited cruising on the freeway the mileage was worse than with 4 cylinders. The EGR was too much for the two cylinders and caused some missing. I should have run on cooler intake air but I did not. I reconnected IAC and after a while the computer had adapted to this. As the computer adapted to the change it became harder and harder to keep it in closed loop. Oddly enough no codes were set.

This was a spur of the moment thing and not well executed. Here is a little confession. The lifter/cam follower assemblies entered a resonance between the guide plates and the cam lobe. I heard the rattle but though it would be okay for a short test. It knocked one lifter apart and I had to pull the pan to retrieve the pieces :o . It beat the heck out of the little wire that holds the lifters together. Several pieces made it into the oil pan. In theory some of that metal could have gone through the oil pump screen but for now I am going to assume it didn't. There were just a few holes in the screen that would pass wire this size. It is a spot of work to get an oil pan off of a Saturn.

It is running on 4 cylinders again. This kind of thing doesn't work well with computer controls. I might try 3 cylinders but I would need to come up with a little better system for holding the lifter or at least blocking the bore to plug the oil hole.

This tank is going to drop me a long way on the top ten list :( .

These Saturn lifters have needle bearing rollers and the rocker arms have needle bearings. I was surprised to see that much effort put into the valve train on a cheap Saturn. This was on the 01 car.

usedgeo -

Wow. That's a no-guts no-glory post :thumbup: . Thanks for putting your car's "skin in the game". Hope the fix won't cost too much.

CarloSW2

Wow!! Talk about taking one for the team!!!!

Wow, what a lot of effort for an experiment. Kudos to you!

All it cost so far is a sore back from lying on a creeper. I am not used to that anymore. Sometimes I think I am getting older. Pretty sure I am not getting wiser.

I hate to ask the obvious, but did you disconnect the fuel injectors when you took off the rocker arms?

Absolutely. I guess I should have said so.

this story reminds me of my old Lincoln, it would idle way to high, due to the Idle Air Bypass falling off, so to warm it up / defrost it, i would just unplug 2 or three fuel injectors.

BTW, It's nice to see some one not just talking about this, but actually trying it. Props to you!

Yeah, I'd thought of trying something like that, too.

I think it will run too rough on 3 cyl

nice effort, though

Wow that's pretty amazing attempt. Looking at your gaslog that's pretty amazing too.

It looks to me that some of your biggest improvements came from heating the intake air and from using sommeander's grooves? Or do you think it just coincided with improved driving? How are you going about heating your intake air and how much are you heating it?