Car #45

[Basement Paul]

Here's my new daily driver. It's a 1997 Saturn SC2. I bought it with only 63k miles on it. I'm not in love with the color, but it was such a nice car and crazy low miles, that I couldn't pass it up. It's got an automatic which is acceptable, and is already getting me over 30mpg every day, and I expect it to be around 35 once it really warms up.

I've done a bunch of stuff to get this car ready to go. I've done the brakes all the way around (again with the help of Pull-a-Part). I've put plugs in it, changed the oil with synthetic, put a trans filter in it (it's a spin on filter), and pulled the heater core out since it wasn't making heat. All I had to do was flush it out. I think the Dexcool crud plugged it up. I've also put a used K&N drop in filter from ebay and did a little modification to the air box and opened it up to a 3" opening and removed the air silencer that mounts to the radiator. The stock opening was less than 2".

The surprise that I ran into while screwing around under this car, was that the left front subframe was rotted out near the suspension parts. Considering how clean the rest of the car is underneath, it seemed really wierd. Turns out this is a real common problem around here. Luckily I found a guy on Craigslist about a mile from my work that would install one from Florida for $600. To me it seemed like a bargain and I already had it done. Hopefully mostmint will post pictures of it since I saved it for him for the spare suspension parts.

I sold the Grand Am to a friend of mine so it's long gone too.

I should be able to run this one for quite awhile since it's so clean and has such low miles. The tires have great tread but are a little dry so I'll put new ones on before winter. It doesn't leak anything, it was a one owner car, the a/c works, and the interior is in GREAT shape.

Here's a pic of the car and the new air box:






-BP

[VeeDub]

Sounds like a great find. did you go to the east side pull a part? last time i was there (2 weeks ago) it looked like they had a bunch.

[TireSmoker]

That thing looks great! Great commuter car, I bet. I hear they make a fun race car.

-Dave

[Basement Paul]

It is an amusing handler and seems to be a real solid piece. A race car it's not although I've already had a solid race against an M45 Infinity.

The next upgrade eventually will be all new speakers and a CD player with an MP3 player and eventually I'll do the exhaust system from the cat back. I think duals would look really cool. I think it could be done, but I'd have to remove the tow hook.

I did use the east side pull a part. The last time I went there weren't too many Saturns (maybe 15 or so). The time before there were twice as many.

-BP

[Basement Paul]

So after a feeble attempt to sell this car, I decided to keep it and drive it over the winter at least. I'm almost to 71k miles now with no real issues. I've done plugs, wires, a tranny filter, and some like new junk yard brakes. It's been leaking some exhaust from the front pipe and flex pipe recently, and the noise is OK with me, but it started leaking exhaust inside the cabin. Last weekend 32V and I took another trip to pull a part and found a perfect pipe and flex from another Saturn, and an extra set of aluminum rims to mount my snow tires (from my wife's old car) on.
Otherwise, the Saturn has been a trusty steed that consistently is getting me 32-33 mpg. Hopefully it will continue to be turnkey and I won't have to mess with it much at all.

-BP