My brother needs some wheels and I may have a line on a 97 Saturn Sc2 coupe that was traded in at work not too long ago. From what I have gathered, it has 137k miles on it, the body is pretty straight and its an automatic. Already knowing that it will most likely be burning some oil, anything else to look out for in particular? If I can get it at a cheap price, is it a worthy beater for my brother?
I've seen lots of these go to the scrapper because the EGR drive transistor fails. PCMs are difficult to come by, I forget the reason exactly, it's been a few years since I saw an S-series. For a long while though it was depressing - PCM can't drive EGR, car fails emissions, can't do anything about it, otherwise nice car goes byebye.
Look at the front subframe around the trans mount.
Excellent cheap car, mine is about to hit 200k! Change the upper motor mount if you are having a lot of noise/vibration issues. Its like 20 bucks and a 5 minute job. You'll be suprised at the difference it makes. Don't worry about the oil burning, the car will run forever, just keep adding oil. Trans filter is a spin on like an oil filter so it's super easy to change. I haven't the EGR issue mentioned above, and I bought the car with 95k on it. I do always use good gas though. (Mobil/Shell/BP etc)
97 Saturn's had bad fuel pump check valves and can be hard starting. The cheap trick is to wire a push button to the fuel pump relay and energize the relay prior to cranking the engine over.
This is timely, as I'm planning to check out a '99 for my step-daughter tomorrow night.
Are there any other parts that are difficult to come by? This one has a newly rebuilt engine, but needs a rear wheel bearing, and the driver's seat belt is frayed. Not sure if the A/C works either.
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