Ok, i just bought another Saturn. This one is a 95 SL1. The car runs great! I'm getting 30mpg in the city and 34mpg mixed.

A few times, and only a few times it will not start. It will crank and crank but wont fire. On these few occasions if it doesnt fire after a few tries i take the key out and wait about 30 seconds and then try it again and it will fire right up. No miss, no smoke, runs fine.

Today i got stuck in heavy traffic on the way home. I noticed that the cooling fan wasnt coming on. It would get right up to the red on the gauge and sit there. As soon as i started moving again it would drop back down to the 1/2 mark. The AC isnt charged so it doesnt come on with that either so i dont know if the fan motor is good or not.

I did some searching and i was wondering if the 2 problems might be related to the ECTS going bad. Could the occasional no start and the no fan be related?

Also, does it matter which ECTS is where? Looking at my car, the front one is the temp guage one and the rear/lower one is the cooling fan one. Is that how they should be or does it matter?

Thanks in advance.

 

Yes, from what ive seen on the forum the ects can cause no start.

Im not sure if it matters, most likely dosent they will both get the same temp

when you change the ECTS get one from the dealer and get the associated connectors from the dealer aswell

 

2 wire sensor is the ects which feeds pcm, That's the one u want to change.
Single wire temp sensor drives the dash gauge.
definitely order ects and connector through local gm dealer.
even if not your problem, the car is new to you and since you don't know if the original resin tipped one is in there, it's wise to change it.

check fan motor by direct temporary wiring to the batt (hot and ground leads)

 

I went ahead and pulled both sensors and both temp sensors are the upgraded brass sensors. The harness has already been swapped out too. The fan fuse checked good and when i ran jumpers from the battery to the fan motor it did kick on. So that just leaves the relay right? I guess the temp sensor could still be the problem. How often to the brass sensors go bad? Anything else it could be?

 

I dont know how long they last, but last I remember they werent that expensive, so it cant hurt to replace them. The problem here is that those could have been replaced when the brass first came out, or recently. You said that you just bought the car so im assuming you dont know when they were replaced.

 

This now makes 2 in row that i've bought that had bad temp sensors right off the bat. This one already had the brass sensor and the harness changed but when i replaced it with a new one the fan kicked right one when it reached the 3/4 mark. Other than that i am very pleased with this car. Love the 30mpg too!

 

Even good sensors can go bad -- glad you found your problem .............