Been a Saturn owner for nearly 20 years now. Used a different forum for years but it seems to be shutdown so I came here.

Gotta question. Did a 2000 SL2 ever have rear disc brakes? If so under what conditions? Noticed it when I was ordering parts and didn't know they ever came with them.

Thanks.

 

Looking at Rock Auto it appears that rear disc brakes were available. I would not know which option package you had to get.

I am familiar with the L series cars and it looks like all the 2002s had abs standard and all the 2002s that I have had have rear discs. I have had other years with rear drums, both before and after 2002. The 2002 factory service manual set I have describes rear drums. Maybe the very basic 2002 L100 came with drums. I have uplevel cars with leather and they have discs.
I have a mid level 2000 LS1 with abs and rear drums.
I bought a 2000 LS and it was very basic, stick shift, manual doors no abs, no cruise, but it had A/C.
I bought a 2003 L200 and it had no abs and it had drums. The 2003 L200 had better cams! That engine is in the 2002 Leather L200/5. It runs hard for a 2.2

 

I don't think the third generation S Series cars had the option for rear discs.

 

I second that on the disc brakes.
The only thing I can think is that the coupe and sedan cutovers to drum only were separated by a year, just like the generations were for each of the body types.

Going to dig on this one.... Just because now I'll think about it until I find out.

 

Wonderful AI tells me that the third generation Saturn S series only had one vehicle configuration that used four-wheel disc brakes. It was the SC2 with abs which was optional. This was a carryover from basically all of the previous SC2 standard configurations. I'm going to go look at RockAuto because they are pretty much never wrong, but who knows.

 

I might add that wonderful AI fed me three wrong answers along the way which I had to challenge to get the correct information. It would be really cool if the information it looked up and the decisions it made based on what it found would actually be correct instead of wide-ranging assumptions. I understand there's simply isn't enough information that it has access to in order to be correct every time. However if you're going to answer a question, either provide a substantially correct answer or state more research is needed.

A particular concern is that it told me that for rear disc brakes were discontinued on coupes after 1992. But when I told it it was bull****, it then went and got the correct answer.

Why can't that happen the first time?

 

That was an editorial accidental thread Jack. Apologies

 

It's Rock Auto that prompted my question. I ordered new front brakes for my 2000 SL2 and never noticed the word Rear for the pads and ordered the wrong thing. I had everything taken apart the day the parts were to arrive and ran into this. Had to go local to get the correct ones so I could finish the repair. Brakes are smooth as butter now. I'm going to try a return to RA but I wanted to know if there ever really were disc brakes. I didn't think so, at least for the SL models.

 

I found this online about Saturn S-series. Mine does not have ABS.

I would assume the 2000's and up did not have discs in the rear then.

1998 ~ 1999: 100% rear drum brakes on all vehicles (eliminate rear disc brakes on SL2, SC2 with ABS).

 

I've looked at a LOT of S series cars in junkyards over the past 15 years and don't recall seeing ONE with rear discs. But I suffer for permanent CRS, so don't take my word for it.