The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Tech → Early 21st century Saturn power...reliable?
Looking around for poorly chosen engine swaps, I note that the late 90s-early 00s Saturns are cheap cheap cheap, often come with manuals, and all seem to have hundreds of thousands of miles.
How have the powerplants held up in Lemons racing?
Saturns have been very reliable in Lemons.
We've been looking at $400 DOHC 5-speed saturn, 125 hp stock, add cheap turbo & intercooler = 200+ hp BIG FUN. Junkyards are full of spare parts
Don't forget the Saturn made a supercharged Ion in the early 2000's that made 205hp.... ion redline or something...I remember driving one and it was quick..plenty quick for Lemons!!
The ION Redline was a Colbat chassis and used an ECOtec. The older (SC, SL, SW) cars were a different chassis and engine.
There is no way that you would find a RL or a Cobalt SS/SC motor in a yard that isnt blown...
the 1.9s are great plants, just get one thats pre 99, the 3rd gens had different heads that proved to fail almost regularly...
Im planning on running one that I just unhydrolocked at the miami event
We've been looking at $400 DOHC 5-speed saturn, 125 hp stock, add cheap turbo & intercooler = bye bye ringlands. Junkyards are full of spare parts
fixed
Saturns are one of the worst cars to try and do a budget turbo on. The stock PCM has only recently been hacked, and I've only heard of one person ever running it under boost. Outside of that at part throttle they will go lean and blow up with standard AFCs. You'd need at least an MS, or limit it to 3 psi and just enjoy the extra 25hp.
That said, we ran all of Capitol Offense on a blown headgasket. When we finished the oil looked like muddy water. They are reliable and if you want to open up the motor and swap some parts around/do machine work, 140whp isn't terribly hard to hit (and you can cure the oil-burning).
We got in the top third with our 92 sl2....spun a bearing on engine #1 at the 4 hour mark and it ran competitive untill the Saturday close....
We swapped the motor on Sat. night and ran the second day smoking wildly. but finished 30th out of 90.
I'd call it a decent finish.
Forget the turbo... Saturns are competitive from a handling and reliability standpoint.
We still passed a bunch of cars.... out horsepowered plenty of them on the big hill at Summit point.
More power dosen't win Lemons.
Finishing is the first hurdle.
Water pump is a major PITA to replace....avoid SOHC Quads as they crack heads for no apparent reason except for maybe a design error at GM.
Water pump is a major PITA to replace...
Really? It takes like 15 mins. It seems pretty reasonable to me.
Talk to the Cajun Cali guys.
They finish third ever race they run with their two door Saturn... I guess an SC?
Not an Ion.
jimeditorial wrote:Water pump is a major PITA to replace...
Really? It takes like 15 mins. It seems pretty reasonable to me.
I was thinking about the 2.4 LD9 re. water pump....you'd need to warp space and time to get that much "re and re" done in 15 minutes....removing the engine mount, timing chain etc...
The 24 Hours of Lemons Forums → Lemons Tech → Early 21st century Saturn power...reliable?