Hi, new guy here, far from a new hand with cars, but the Saturn is reasonably foreign to me. It's my wife's car and she tends to prefer having an oil change shop do the oil.

However, I do all my own stuff on my car. It's a '93 BMW 318is, 208,000 miles, and loved every second. I know every drop of oil that's gone in over the last 7 years, and every drop out.

My wife's gotten frustrated with the local shop- they tried to upsell one day, so I agreed to go for it. I've a topside extractor, works great on my car, but I'm not sure if I can use it on hers- looks like the oil filter would be in the way, at least from the Haynes drawings.

Anybody tried an extractor on these? It's an '01 SC1, about 177,000.

 

I have not attempted to use an extractor on any Saturn engine. I'm not saying you can't, rather I simply don't know ......

 

Extractors as understand go down the dip stick into the crank case. I have yet to take apart an engine that had some kind of a restriction that would keep something like that from going all the way to the bottom of the oil pan. Engine that I am aware of that have some form of windage tray as part of the oil pan design also have a hole in it that the dipstick is guided through, usually by having the dip stick tube be long enough to pass through the windage tray. Can't be sure all of them do. Never used one and have had no desire to buy one.
But do not see why the Oil Filter on a Saturn would have any interferance with the use of one. They screw on to the oil pump mechanism one way or another.
I have no idea how your extractor thingy is designed but assume it is some kind of a semi flexible tube with an oil pump on it external some where. I can not see why if you can slide it down the oil dip stick tube that you can't hear it bumping the bottom of the oil pan and be satisfied it is all the way in.
But then again, never used one, never seen one and don't know what they look like.
But I am building a Mercury Marine engine to put into a car and in it's boat application it was designed to be used with and oil extractor and has a way huge long dip stick that comes all the way to the front of the engine before the dip stick handle is exposed. The extractor would have to be a long thing flexible tube about 3 feet long or so to even function. And would slide all the way through to the bottom of the oil pan which is where the tube for the dip stick ends.
I assume you push it is until you hear it hit bottom and turn on the pump and suck the oil out.
Me, I will unscrew the drain plug in the oil pan.