Hi everyone,
I just bought an '02 saturn sl2. Before I bought it I was doing a lot of reading about saturns on this site. Hopefully this will be a simple car I can maintain myself without too many nightmares.
I'll keep learning as I go, and pre-apologies for all the dumb questions I will be pestering you guys with.

 

welcome. We're here to help you learn.

Also, make sure you make use of the forum search function---many a post about many a thang.

Either way, we'll help you out.

Check your oil weekly for the first few months to see if you have an oil burner. Many a saturn has been killed by letting the oil get too low and things getting damaged because of that. measure how much you need to add and how many miles that covered. keep it pretty much topped off. You don't need to be **** -- just aware and preemptive/

If it ends up not an oilburner that's even better/

Please look at the signatures in the posts by the other members, and go to the dropdown menu on the top right, choose User CP, and configure your signature and other stuff

Also we are a forum of active posters -- if you don't have tech questions right now that's cool....you can chime in on the off topic threads/ Try to get your post count up to about 10 pretty soon. We'll be happy to see you stay.

 

Thanks, I will keep an eye on oil levels for sure. It can't possibly burn more oil than a clapped out Chevette I used to drive years ago...

 

Hopefully I won't need to call you on that one later....

Ah, the Chevette -- another shining example of GM engineering. I remember getting wind shear from pretty much any passing vehicle while riding in the back seat while the driver tried like hell to reach 55mph

 

Yep, welcome to the forum. You'll find we're a rather ecclectic group of people, but we do try to offer as much help as we can to everyone when they ask. Stick around and see how we bust on one another from time to time.

 

Thanks, I'll let you know what I find when I did into my saturn over the next few days. Just looking at the Saturn in the garage I find in some ways it kind of reminds me of my Fiero (a car I loved!) only backwards---or is that forwards?

Yup, my old Chevette was a p.o.s, but compared to the Vega my parents had when I was a kid that Chevette was a Cadillac....

 

Hello Wavehog welcome to the SATURN FORUM. Stop in the user cp and make yourself a signature if you would.

 

I will try to add a pic and sig soon as I have a minute. My '02 Saturn is coming along nicely. Over the last few days I changed all the fluids, installed new front pads and rotors and rear drums and shoes, new snow tires, wiper blades, backup light switch, air filter, plugs, welded up a crack in the exhaust just before the flex pipe...so far so good. It's a nice car to work on, other than it being in my cold and cramped unheated garage...

The car drives really well. It goes in for a safety check on Tue, so hopefully I've checked everything necessary. I've been using the MTO inspection rules as a guide so I hope I didnt miss anything. Overall the car is quite solid and it even looks ok. It passed e-test today with no problem at all. So thats a good start.

 

those backup switches tend to last about 7 years in my experience so you might want to get a spare now while they are available if you plan to keep the the car

 

Thank you for the tip about the backup lamp switches. I'm happy today, my '02 Saturn just passed its safety check today and passed its e-test last friday. I will be sure to keep checking in to ask questions as I learn to live with this car.