Sorry Rube.

Didn't mean to be harsh -- you could not have known

 

This thread brings up a question in my mind. That is, a new owner of what might be a serviceable S-car looking for some place to take it for service.
When I was seriously looking to purchase a Scan tool that would work with the level of logic used in the S car. That is apparently a variation of pre-OBD-I the scan tools available specifically exempted the S series Saturns.
I finally solved that problem by purchasing a used Snap On Scan Tool.
That said, what is the odds that a service provider today is going to have a Scan Tool that is able to read older cars. "Specially" one that is now about 25 years old and is no longer being manufactured as a brand.
The purchase made sense for me as I have the S car which is apparently a pre-OBDI level logic and a modified AMC Spirit which uses a 1995 Jeep Cherokee based system which I believe to be a full blown OBDI level vehicle.

 

No problem, derf. Just busting your chops a little bit!

 

As a creaky old lady in her 70's who is alone and owns a 2000 Saturn SL1 as her only car, I find your remarks both helpful and discouraging. Keeping the car seems like a mistake. When I bought it in 2003, the teacher who taught high school auto shop classes was a Saturn mechanic. I relied on him for car repairs, but he is gone. Since then what I have heard most often from mechanics is "can't get it to do what you say it is doing," or some phrase that means they have no clue. Some places are willing to fix something that is not the problem. Now several places just refuse to work on it. Perhaps it is time to turn it into a greenhouse. Ford Escape, huh? I'll have to take a look.

 

Now, Now, Violet,

Let's not get down on ourselves or the Satty just yet. Your 3rd Gen S car is a baby w 9x,xxx mi on it.

I had a 95 SC2 w 236K on it when I gifted it yo my nephew. Has its issues but still going.

I drive a 97 SC2 w 251K on it.

Pretty much everything has been replaced at least once except for the fuel pump, brake master cylinder, Power brake booster, tie rods, CVs, and 3 wheel bearings. And the EvAP stuff.

It was paid off 15 years ago, and any repair I make that costs $350 and lasts 1 month is the same as having made a car payment. I'd keep this 19 yr old car over one 10 years newer because I know exactly what has and hasn't been done to it, how to start it in -15F weather in WI, and I know exactly what it can do on the road and what it cannot do on the road...dry, wet, or icy.

I have been in ditches, I have been in the edge of a farmer's field on top of a pile of small logs, only to have 5 good samaritans stop, block the road, and basically lift my car off of the log pile as I rocked it until I got back onto the blacktop I have driven 100mph on unpopulated WI county highways, just because.

Treat it well and it should do the same

 

Violet, I sympathies with your position and find myself in the same place as my Mother In Law who now has to deal with her Husband as he slides slowly into Alzheimer's or something that appears similar forcing life style changes unplanned for and unwanted while dealing with what is now a 25 year old car of a more popular brand still in production and beginning to require maintenance above and beyond simple routines items.
The loss of the local mechanic, a person once depended on to keep things operational but now gone and replaced by someplace where gasoline can be purchases if you pump it your self and you can get a 6-pack of beer and a sandwich or a candy bar. But get your vehicle repaired? Unthinkable!
A well used but serviceable vehicle appears to have become a throw away item. After hearing a counter person tell a woman that her $600.00 brake repair on her Buick represented the top of the line repair knowing full well mediocre parts were installed and maybe correctly and they probably would work, but a deal? Not even close! I still do my own work and at max, $250.00 worth of parts would represent top of the line components for my purposes, but again I do my own repairs and could do brakes for under $100.00 and use mediocre parts and they probably would work.
I do not have a suggestion for you and yes, it is a difficult position to be in.
I wish I had a better answer for you and for my Mother in Law other than try to purchase a newer car in good condition to forestall the need for repairs for as long as possible.

 

Although I am not in good enough physical shape to pay personal visits to the parts stores to ask for the names of mechanics, I did phone all of them in town today. Most said they had no names. Only a couple gave me names. So now I have the names of two potential mechanics, but one of them does not speak English, and that is all I speak.