Well, I broke something
 

Driving around the town with my buddy, put the clutch in to go into 5th, and as soon as it slid in gear there was a loud bang and some smoke started pouring out the back. Pulled over and the thing pissed out all of its trans fluid.
At first I thought I blew the diff pin, but my inspection when I got it towed home showed the trans casing is still intact.
So im thinking now that I blew the syncro and the front seal. I got a hoist already so I can take the engine out at the end of the week.

Back to the turbo diesel!

Well hell .............. that just sucks. Will say I do like your little sedan, makes me miss a few of my s-cars.

Sure sounds like a seal blew out, man. Let us know what you find out.

Funny enough, my dads truck blew its starter on sunday night when my friends and I were going somewhere, so I was freaking out.

Im starting at 8 am on Sunday pulling the motor and transmission. Ill be posting most of my findings immediately on facebook, and ill wrap up at the end of the night on here. The only good thing about this is while the motor is out of the car, I am redoing the rear main seal which I know has started leaking abit. Or, If i find a complete engine and trans I might just swap those in. Or go for a full rebuild. Ill decide that later though.
if anyone wants to follow on facebook let me know and ill give you my name to friend request.

I honestly love this car, I told my parents if I cant have another saturn this one is staying for as long as it can.

Ill rebuild it so it can. half of the damn parts are new in it anyways lol

It seems to me that I have seen mention of a pin or the like drifting free from the differential and wearing it's way through the trans-axle on the S cars. I really know next to nothing about it other than I see mention of it and only on standard transmssion models.
Anyway, looking at the nice shiny paint makes me envious, the constant exposure to the sun and heat destroyed mine and when I repainted it, I screwed up meaning I have to now do it again. Dang. It is gonna be a lot of work to make it look nice again.
And it do run fine!

lol, the paint might be shiny but it is battered and bruised. car has scuffs allll over it

Damn little S's handle so well and thats before dropping, rear swaybar, strutbar, or good tires.

Ive thrown that car around some corners at speed. I surprised myself lol. The tires I have on there now arent the grippiest, but they do the job well enough (I think Im gonna go for some bridgestones next)
Are rear swaybars still around for the car, would love to get my hands on one of them. Maybe Ill throw a strut bar in after the rebuild - if I have some cash left over.
speaking of rebuilds
the final decision is made (I had to convince my parents to let me keep the saturn). For now Im doing an bottom end overhaul and getting a rebuilt head to get me back to perfect running condition. (Hopefully) toward the end of the summer I plan on doing cams and valves and whatnot.
I couldnt pull the motor sunday because we had a beautiful week in NJ and then mother nature decides to downpour on my only day off... oh well

If you buy a front strut bar, make sure you buy a solid one. There is a alum flat bar that was made for the car but it's just decoration. They also at one time made a rear strut tower bar along with a 3way ajustable rear sway bar. The sway bar works outstanding and worth every penny.

Im assuming that ascetics one is that $40 cheap ebay one I see alot.
I plan on buying one from AMR, they also still sell the rear strut brace and coilovers (for a price)
http://www.amrengineering.com/produc...h-pt.html?ve=2

Im definitely gonna look for one of those sway bars, dont think Ill find it but cant hurt to look.
Oh, new transmission came today, its out of a 2001 SW2 from canada, 60K miles on it oh yeah!

Ask on every Saturn forum you go to .... and search down a few more and ask on them. There has to be out there some bloody place.

The Pull-A-Part yard in Nashville has at least one of every S series on the lot from 92 to 2001. If any of you know what will interchange, I'll look the next time I go there.

Well, I pulled the motor out sunday - pulled the transmission off of it monday. My original suspisions were correct, the diff pin backed out and took a nice 2.5" chunk out of the inner casing. fun!
oh, I picked up a set of sweet ass Homecoming edition gauges for like $70. There gonna look so sexy

Since ive been gone for so long, working and such, I decided to give a small update on the car.

The engine has since been torn apart, and will be going to the machine shop next week. I'm gonna bore it .020 over and do cams and valves. I already have the transmission, waiting to order new axles, all new sensors, injectors, and other small parts. Hopefully now that I can get rolling on this since work picked up I hope to have it done within a month (I want it for my birthday lol!)

good thing I decided to rebuild the motor, the whole thing stank of burnt oil and rod clearances were wayyy out of spec. rings were cooked and the head looked like a sludgey hell. Once all of this is done, all im doing is replacing the master cylinder, and i will have a brand new drivetrain basically. so pumped!

Thanks for the update, man. At least you're doing it right by taking your time. Just make sure when you reassemble the rods and main bearings that you have an entirely clean work surface and parts. You don't want any dirt on those bearings to score them before you get it broke in good.

Damn I like to see others work hard. Keep it up brother.

Great job, I get a tremendous amount of satisfaction building a motor. A question, where are you getting the cams and are they a performance cam and a suggestion. When you put the thing back together use a heavier oil than the 5w20 or what ever the light weight stuff is that is factory recommended. Which probably is the singal biggest contributor to the piston ring problems you are seeing.
I bought one from a junk yard to build that was so neglected hot tanking would not clean it up. It had to be baked like an oven cleans itself when used. Good luck!

Im getting a performance cam, from SDA most likely. I had already switched over to 10-30 a few months before the blow up, so im most likely gonna stick with that but go synthetic after i break in the motor. And i cant even imagine how big the smile will be on my face when we restart it for the first time - im so happy i finally got to do this - even if im without my car for three months

Yea i know about the bearings, Im having my friend who has done quite a few motors help me so I dont screw anything up. trust me you guys will know first thing when its done, and thanks for all the positive feedback.

o.k., I can not find anything about SDA other than they exist and apparently have made more than camshafts. It even sounded like they made cylinder heads at one point in time and have been out of business at least once.
So where is their information on them.
I did see an Add for Andy's something or another that had mystery cams for almost $800.00 which included a $250.00 core charge.
If my paint on my car was not so screwed up I would call Iskenderian to see if they have or could do anything.
They are my cam manufacturer of choice. But until I get the paint and drivers seat straightened out it runs just fine.
So where do I find information on SDA?

Well, that blows those plans out of the water lol. http://streetdesignauto.net/ was where they were, and now it appears that there gone. I know of one other (import performance parts) but that cam is expensive!

Yuh, I found another listing for This Model Saturn Cam and it and gold had a lot in common.
Which makes me stop and think.
Scary ain't it!
1st. That Saturn ain't an import. It is home brewed in Tennessee. When it was new(er) GM was racing the things in SCCA small sedan classes. I wonder if there is a performance cam some where in the GM parts books that can still be ordered? Stranger things than that have happened.
And my self I am old school, use and prefer Iskenderian cams.
http://www.iskycams.com/
and generally if I have a question a phone call to them will usually answer it.
I wonder if they ever ground cams for that engine?
And if they did, can they do it again.
And I'll throw out this, I have always felt my 94 would be happy with another 15 hp and I know I would, but to be honest that has been low on my priority list 'specially since I screwed up my paint job and am going to have to repaint again AND deal with deterioration of the interior.
So if you were inclined to give them a call and ask;
1. if they would or could do it
and
2. What would a price break be on two sets I could be interested

Things are winding down.
All engine parts are ordered, engine assembly is on sunday. after that all I need is the clutch and ill be good to go!!
Cleaned all the nasty out of my intake manifold, then shot it (and my new oil pan) up with some paint. I plan on putting the homecoming gauges in the car on thursday

Looking good, dude. What did you finally decide about a cam?

They are looking good. I guess when I get to the point where going back together is taking place I start getting excited. I am getting ready to weld up the transmission mount I fabricated and I am getting a drive shaft made. I have some repainting to do but the answer to the same question Ruby asked, what did you finally do about a cam shaft?
Next after this is done to fabricate shift linkage so the column shift will work the transmission.

Currently im staying stock cams and Ill move onto that down the road, dont have the cash for it now and instead of rebuilding the head Ive bought a fully remanufactured one so all I have to do is bottom end and timing

But, im an ass and messed up my nicely machined block.I managed to drop the block on my foot (wearing sandals -.-), on the head side while putting it on the stand. Fortunately, my foot is fine, but it messed up the block. Theres a few dents in the aluminum where the gasket would seat and it looks like I would lose compression from that. also, one of the sleeves that go into the head for the head bolt was damaged slightly, but i could straighten that out myself if I have to.
Ive heard of people shaving the head to bump compression, but could it be done on the block without problems on these motors? If so anyone know what the maximum amount I can shave off without having problems? I dropped it today, and my quick trip to the ER kinda killed all my time to check it. I need to take a good look at it also for cracks
I tossed the question out on different racings forums also hoping to get an answer, trying to avoid having to buy another block

The odds are that the damage can be repaired and the block be salvageable. Not being able to see the damage my self limits the capability of passing judgement on what will or will not work.
And not to make light of your plight which is the last thing in the world that I would want to do because of the frustration you have for both damaging your work and the trip to ER and all that goes with it I can only say one thing for it. Damn! I am glad I am not the only boneheaded member of the forum. I thought I was the only one stupid enough to do all that!
My most recent (yes of few) was a year ago last thanksgiving and I still have no feeling in the tip of one finger. It did heal nicely though.
What you are describing is decking the block. That is removing enough material from the head surface so the the space between the top of the piston and the surface of the block (called deck height) becomes a minimum. The less there is the more compression you can build in.
Of course compression has a limit too, that is the amount of mechanical compression that the engine has that it will run on premium fuel with out pinging or knocking. That noise one hears when it does take place in uncontrolled explosion of the fuel when it fires. That noise is caused by that and in many cars that have fuel injection a detonation sensor is part of the controls that are used by the computer that runs the engine is to sense the pinging or knocking using the detonation sensor and when it is heard the timing is reduced or retarded to reduce the tendency to cause pinging.
This pinging or detonation can cause broken pistons and engine failure. Been there and done that. As far as I am concerned using fuel that takes 20cents more per gallon than the cheap stuff to be part of an elimination process of pinging is cheap insurance when you have a $5000.00 engine sitter there that might not take much in the way of pinging to start breaking pistons again. So what do I do with 87 Octane gasoline? I use it to wash parts with and kill weeds.
This was a procedure that used to be part of a tune up. There was a recommended timing setting that could be measured and maintained by the owner. If you chose to run more advance you also needed to use a premium fuel if you were not at the time, and frankly the car gave better performance, more power and better fuel economy, it would run harder and faster but did require premium fuel.
At today's prices which is 20 cents more per gallon than the cheap stuff allows the engine to develop maximum performance when needed.
Why? Today the tuning is done by the computer as you drive the car. The word tune up as paid for when you take your car in for one is generally one of replacing something that is worn out (always with the statement if needed) and that a filter is clean. All part of what used to be a tune up but today is pretty much all that is left of one.
Running late or retarded timing, again today automatically done by the computer listening to the detonation sensor or part of the algorithms designed into the computer to tune and run the engine generally with the request by the manufacturer to run a minimum grade of octane in the fuel used.
Late timing is also accompanied by excess engine heat and exhaust heat with the later leading to problems running headers and blowing gaskets out every so often due to the increased exhaust temperatures.
My fuel injected AMC I-6 I built does not use a detonation sensor and is a Speed Density design so there is no mass air flow sensor either. But it is requested you use only 92 octane gasoline. Here in Arizona the maximum octane is 91 with the exception of racing gasoline which is available at some selected gasoline stations.
Once you get east of the Mississippi you will find 92 most places and 93 and 94 in many places. Using an Octane of 93 will let you rung quite a bit of compression in a built up engine with out pinging or knocking.
OR you (or your computer) can detune things to run on lesser octane with lesser results from the engine.
Just remember detuning an engine to run low octane also results in less power developed, more engine and exhaust heat created and less fuel mileage. All depending on how things are being tuned.
So how much you can "Deck the Block" is basically a function of physically can you due to the design and what octane gasoline you have available to support having done so.
I had that done along with milling the head to achieve a 9:1 compression on the AMC I-6 engine I built.
The only concern I can think of is how much slop in the chain drive to the overhead cams can be tolerated before a problem steps up and can be seen and that I do not know but at face value I don't think it is a problem.
As to the dents and all. Depending on where they are they could or could not be a problem.
Also a machine shop that that does block work, would have the capability of welding up the dented surface and then re-machining it to make it flat.
The bottom line? To fix it is probably doable. All it will take is money! And I guess it sounds like you need to find out how much. I would approach a machine shop that deals with decking the block as an engine machining service to find out. And
quit wearing sandals when working with heavy things that can be dropped on your feet.