Repairs or mods to my Saturn L200, starting at newest first.
May 2025:
Car started hiccuping when accelerating from a stop sign or light @79941 miles on the odometer. Otherwise ran fine except it had a shimmy above 65 MPH. Took it to Car Company shop in Milton Freewater…this is the shop that determined that my struts were fine back in Nov. ’22 whereas 3 other shops all wanted to replace them so I felt I could trust them with the repairs.
They found that the coil pack assembly was bad and other associated items needed replacing. The coil pack device is replaced as one unit and contains the electronics and coils for the 4 spark plugs. They also did the standard tune up like replacing spark plugs. When the tires were looked at, they found the front tires I’d moved to the rears the last time I bought tires had the inner edges worn down to the steel belts. Couldn’t see that on the street sides. DOH! So bought a pair of new tires too, and their price was reasonable for Toyo brand tires. Everything came to $534 and included: Ignition coil boots, plugs, ignition coils, labor, and the 2 tires.
Feb 2025:
Since the car had 80K on it, felt it was a good time, since I was in Mexico, to have the brakes worked on. Had the pads and shoes replaced, the rotors and drums turned, and it turns out the shop thought I needed a new Master Cylinder as the pedal felt mushy. Turned out that Saturn designed it that way and it was fine and the new MC didn’t make the pedal action change at all. No discount from the shop though, which I didn’t fight for since it was Mexico, and the cost was only $475 for all that work. Around 1/3 the price it would have been in the US. I’d probably have needed a new MC someday anyway.
Jan-Dec 2024:
No repairs needed except there were some missing screws and a bent bracket that holds the plastic fender, right quarter panel in place and some missing plastic snaps in the passenger wheel well. I must have scraped against a pole or something in Mexico while towing. That was the only repair needed that entire year, and it was minor as the damage didn’t harm the fender panel at all. With the fender tightened down, the weird ticking noises I heard when traveling above 60 MPH disappeared.
Mar 2023:
The cabin fan got flakey, and eventually died so only had heating or cooling air ‘drifting’ out of the vents. Checked on Saturn Fans and found that it was likely caused by a bad electronic module that controls the fan. To access it for someone in my shape was not fun and I dragged out the work over 2-3 weeks. What needs to be done is the entire glove box assembly is removed, than the module is found tightly placed into a small hole in the wall to the left of the glove box. Once pulled out, it’s just a matter of disconnecting the electrical connector, plugging in the new controller and reassembling. And all the flaky operation of the heating/cooling went away. Cost for the module from Rock Auto was $32. Took another 2 weeks to get around to getting all the dash & glove box parts back in place.
Nov 2022:
Decided I needed to have the front end shimmy that occurred above 65 MPH looked at. Already had new tires all around. Took the car to 3 different shops who all told me I needed a front end alignment AND new struts. All to the tune of ~$1500. But reading on Saturn Fans forum about it, I found that shops often mistakenly thought the struts were bad because they are free floating and so can rattle when pressed a bit. One shop in Milton Freewater just pushed on the hood and pronounced the struts as good (I’ll use them again if needed). Around that time I drove to Lynnwood, WA up near Seattle to visit my brother and while there found an alignment shop that did what they could to align the car. Only cost $145 for an excellent 4-wheel alignment without having to replace the struts. They mentioned that the Saturn line did not include provisions for a proper alignment but they got it as close as they could. On the way home I could get up to 80 MPH without any shimmy at all.
April 2022 to Oct 2022:
Only had the normal maintenance items, oil, filters, tires, battery, etc..
April 2022: Serpentine belt:
Heard a lot bang when starting the engine one morning and upon shutting down and opening the hood, discovered that the serpentine belt had snapped. Checked all the rotating items and everything seemed free. Didn’t want to work on it myself, but did stop at O’Reily’s for a new belt and filter before taking it to a local Tucson shop to replace it. Yes, it can be driven without a belt…but I had a friend drive me to O’Reilly’s and than drove the car to the shop…only had 2 miles to go downhill to get to the shop.
May 19th, 2022: The comfort controls of this ’03 are as you would imagine, computer based. As autos of this era have 30-60 individual embedded computers running the show. I’ve never used anything like the AC/Heat/Vent system in this car and found it is really difficult to comprehend. I’ve just about given up trying to understand it, preferring to just live with it and try to adapt to it’s particularities.
When I bought this car in January of 2021, there was a steep learning curve trying to figure out how it works exactly and I felt, eventually, that I had a handle on it. So I spent a spring, summer, fall, and winter with all the weather that nature can through at me trying to understand where to set things and I felt I had it down pat.
And then I traveled to Tucson in November ’21 expecting to stay a few weeks. And the desert SW has the cool night desert and the warm mornings, than the hot afternoons. So the system was getting a work out. And would often just not be settable.
Here’s a shot of the comfort control system:
You can see that it doesn’t have a slider but that knob on the left does most of the work. The display shows outside temp, and turning that left knob sets the cabin temp to where you’d like it. Buttons select AUTO, Recirculate, etc. The other knob is either auto fan speed, or manual fan speed select. Most of the time over the months I could set those on auto and it would output coolish or warmish air to meet the set temp. And strong cold air when it was hot. Pretty neat…if it worked. But often it’s temperamental.
As it got hotter and hotter in Tucson though, it decided it didn’t want to blow cold air out the middle vents. The one’s most of us like to have blowing on our midsections when it’s over 85 F outside. So for several weeks in Tucson, it just wouldn’t do that. Oh, it would weakly blow out those vents, but strongly blow out of the window vents and the floor vents, just not the middle vents where needed. So I spent hours online trying to figure out if there was something wrong, or if it was meant to do that. Never did get an answer that would be reasonable to follow up so just let it go.
Here’s a shot of the center of the dash where the temp sensor is. It’s an important element of the system as it’s supposed to let the computer know what the sun is doing and the inside cab temp…but it’s the same sun here in Pahrump at 2700′ elevation as it was in Tucson at 2400′ so it shouldn’t have fixed itself if it was only due to weather.
It was having trouble operating correctly until now. I’ve moved on to Pahrump and found that boom, it’s working fine now?? I didn’t do anything, it just started working again. Climb into the car when it’s up in the 80’s, rotate the dial to the left (coldest setting) and the fan slowly picks up speed and eventually roars as it’s getting colder. This as the AC system wakes. Like it was before I’d visited Tucson. So nothing wrong with the automatic operation of the vent doors. WTH? Grrr. Can’t, so far, figure out what it’s doing.
I have no idea what, if anything, is wrong with it. Doh!
March ’23: Not long after publishing the above report, I found that the symptoms pointed to an electronic speed controller for the fan and/or the air directing doors. This device is buried behind the glove compartment box, which must be removed, then on the left side of that box is a hole where the small module is screwed in. It was a bear finding where it was mounted, and replacing it. Not much room to work. When removed, it’s stamped with a P/N so it was easily found online at Rock Auto for $32. I left the mounting screw out as it’s not really needed.