New member from Akron Ohio, 2001 Saturn Sl1

[Golf3r]

its nice to know its a common problem, just wish it wasnt happening in the first place . 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 . 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 . thanks again

[cfg83]

Golf3r -

Originally Posted by Golf3r

its nice to know its a common problem, just wish it wasnt happening in the first place . 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 .

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.

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.

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

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 . thanks again

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 :

http://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

[cfg83]

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

[zpiloto]

Originally Posted by cfg83

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.

[ELF]

Originally Posted by Golf3r

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 . 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.:

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.

[cfg83]

zpiloto -

Originally Posted by zpiloto

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.

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

Oh the humanity!!!!!!

CarloSW2

[Golf3r]

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 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. 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.

[diamondlarry]

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.

[cfg83]

Golf3r -

Originally Posted by Golf3r

... 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. 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.

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

[diamondlarry]

Originally Posted by cfg83

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.