Sounds logical.
I was of course trying to help scope out whether the money and the effort were worth it for trying to remedy this issue based on the overall health of the engine. I'd definitely repeat the compression test to be sure. For the cost of a tensioner, and an extra pulley, you can't really lose unless it's a mounting issue and even then you don't necessarily lose.
Please come back and let us know how this all turned out. Many people seek our advice, then disappear into the ether, so we don't necessarily know whether our input was helpful.......

 

Appreciate that. Definitely been there with this car, especially when it died on me. Once I got it running again with the new ignition, it's been fine. The compression test was something like 110-110-76-110. But, then after the camera inspection and leakdown test showing no problem, then getting it running with a lack of any misfire or weird fuel trims, I think I just messed up the test. At this age, I expect some things to happen. I'm sure eventually that time will come. The idea of pulling the timing cover did not sound very appealing, since then I would definitely do the timing set as well, and question pulling the head too.
All that stuff is on order now, should get it Wednesday, so this project will wait for next weekend.

 

Yikes, those are low. Service limit per Saturn back in the day was 180.
I'm hoping you don't I have to address restoring integrity to the mounting point.

How much oil does this beast burn?

 

I'm probably misremembering. I tossed the piece of paper long ago after coming to the conclusion it was an error. Whatever it was, 3 was showing ridiculously low, like <100. In any case, if that were actually true, you would notice.
I really haven't kept track of oil consumption, it's probably 1 - 1.5 qt/3000 mi.

 

Did a little preliminary work yesterday, looks pretty certain to be the tensioner itself.
First, its "default" position is roughly in the middle. I can move it to either side, and it springs back -roughly- to about the middle. Not how that's supposed to work. In the middle, I can move it around slightly by hand. No movement between the main body and timing cover was observed.
Second, I can now see a gap between the swing arm and main body, and again the tension spring isn't even touching the main body.

With it "defaulting" to the middle, that presents a challenge since the pulley is right on top of the bolts. Nonetheless, from what I've seen I expect this to be a pretty straightforward fix.