Hi: New to the Saturn forum. Hope the experts can offer some experience and advice. My daughter owns a 2001 SC-2 with the 1.9 liter DOHC engine. Lately she has noticed a periodic drop in the car's engine coolant level - the check engine light has alerted her. She says there is no noticeabale coolant leak and she has been adding more coolant to keep it at the appropriate level.


Found the highlighted info below at http://www.rebuiltautoengines.com/saturn-articles.html


Coolant leak on 2000-2001 GM 1.9L DOHC engines. These engines are used in the Saturn vehicles made by GM.
Some customers may comment about loss of engine coolant, low coolant levels and/or engine overheating.

These customer complaints may be due to the intake manifold gasket leaking. The leak may occur at the cylinder head to intake manifold coolant passage located at the rear of the number four cylinder intake port. The intake manifold seal may experience a compression set allowing an external coolant leak past the seal during cold engine operating conditions.

To solve the complaint of coolant loss, Saturn has come up with a revised intake manifold gasket for the DOHC engines. The gasket is a new 2-piece design as show in Figure 1. A separate coolant seal (1) that is made of a different material and is black in color. A shortened intake manifold gasket (2) is of the same material and orange in color like the original one-piece design.


Can anyone in the forumcomment on this problem? Perhaps someone has experienced this.


Wondering if my daughter might actually be able to spot the leak in the location described?


Anyone know how much Saturn's fix costs and if it really fixes the problem described.


Thanks in advance for any info you may be able to pass along.


R Joslin

I'm certainly not an expert, but I have a SL2 and itwas leaking coolant, I had it checked out and it was the water pump going out. My dad replaced it and it was still leaking, but he got under and checked it out and it was just a hose he didn't get tightened up enough.

I am having very similar problems on a 2000 sc2. the coolant is leakingbut, my mechanic said I need a new head gasket. When I posted this, most said he was a crook. YOur posting is quite interesting. We have been getting a lot of those check engine warnings and other on the dashboard. This car only has 49k miles. He wants $2k to fix it. Have you found anything more on the subject?

Mikeraff23:


Hello and Thanks for the reply.


I only had one other reply in response tothe post and it concerned the possibility of the water pump leaking coolant. That certainly is a possibility.However,my daughter reports there is no leaking of coolant on the ground. My experience with water pumps is that generally there will be some leakage that is discernible.


Unfortunately the car is about 600 miles away and I am having to do the trouble shooting long distance.


As far as the post concerning the leak around the intake manifold, one other piece of data I can add isthe affected VINs are up through VIN 1Z305500. Turns our my daughter's VIN is in that range.


I am still hoping someone on the forum that has actually experienced the problemcan chime in and report on their experiencegetting the problem fixed...cost etc...


Question for you. Can you see where you are losing coolant or is the leveljust mysteriously and peridocally going down?


Thanks Again for the reply.


R Joslin

Mike where did you post the question that everyone got back to you saying the mech was a crook? Still the people that know your Saturn the best is your nearest Saturn dealer.