Right. The Saturn. It's still here. Kind of like a cockroach with a loveable personality. Commuting 90ish miles a day with the cheapo radio supplying tunes that cover up the interior rattles.
Updates, those sort of exist.
The inventory now includes Powar's old and ugly 16x7.5s, though I do believe they suit the car quite well.
The immature back window sticker collection continues to grow.
And goals for the car have changed. First of all, no I'm not actually going to enter in the challenge with it. I am probably going to be driving it to the challenge though. More to come as plans and parts come closer together.
I know lowering it would be pointless and make the ride suck...but that wheel gap though. lol 
In reply to slowbird :
Maybe eventually. Right now i see any attempt to make this car less ugly purely just to make it less ugly as a waste.
In reply to Daylan C :
I mean, you could also lean way into the ugliness and give it one of those awful "rust" hoods like VW owners do. Or stickerbomb the whole entire front of the car.
In reply to slowbird :
But the real patina from 2 cars is already there.
In reply to Daylan C :
Real patina is out. Fake patina is the new hotness. 
In reply to slowbird :
Fake patina isn't patina.
I know. I just get a certain amount of enjoyment out of really trashy cosmetic mods. As long as they're on someone else's car.
So, updates
New rubber on the 14"s literally the cheapest thing Discount Tire had in stock in 185/70r14. Barum Brilliantis II. Spacecadet apparently ran these on one of his old Hondas and approves of them so that's nice.
More stickers
And then I hit a deer and didn't notice the damage until most of 2 days later.
Car is still doing wonderfully as a commuter. Nothing much else to report.
I just noticed I've put 5300 miles on this car since September. I guess I was right when I said it was a mile sponge.
So one thing I missed from the Mustang was the Panavise solid phone mount I had on the dash. Nothing like that existed for the Saturn, but I was looking through Amazon and found this:
Flexible mount designed to bolt to the front left bolt on the front right seat of a truck. I was worried it was going to be too tall for the Saturn but decided to try it anyway. Luckily the Saturn's seat bolts being perpendicular to the ground mean this thing can point forward then curve back to where I want it. I managed to find a place that's easy to reach, easy to quickly glance down to see maps or whatever and just barely clears my hand and the shifter in 5th gear. It does bounce a bit but it's not awful and the kit came with a strap I can use to tie the top of it to the console if I decide it's too annoying.
Slightly intrusive on right seat passenger leg room and their knee could bump it and push it to where it would block the shifter, but I don't have passengers in this car very often.
I actually kinda like that mount. Might have to look into getting one. I don't trust suction cup windshield mounts and I don't like dash mounts.
In reply to slowbird :
Here is the Amazon link if you want to look into it.
I don't suppose you need another, 3 times as expensive one, do ya? 
As seen for sale down the street from where I work:
Says "$600 cash deal" on the windshield. Presumably the car lot on the corner just wants to get rid of this thing.
In reply to slowbird :
If it was a manual twin cam I'd be semi interested honestly. Also I'm suspicious of it being a northern car because these things still rust even though the plastic skins hide it well.
The SL continues to be the only reliable thing in my life and that's why I'm over here scheming to figure out a replacement for it. I realized is the first of my 3 digit piles of garbage that has lived long enough that I had to renew the registration. It makes it cheap enough to drive ~100 miles a day but it's really not a nice place to spend that much of your life in. Even though it's proven itself extremely dependable I still make the excuse that I don't trust it for long trips because I don't want to drive it that much. My crappy Mustang was my go to steed for dumb day trips because I liked it and trusted it. While it was probably the smart financial decision to keep the Saturn and ditch the Mustang, I should have kept that Mustang.
That's right the novelty is officially gone from my $200 beater and my boredom is beginning to challenge my sensibility. This is the part where I start trying to think of a plan.
Drove this pile for the first time today since picking up the Miata. It's needs some attention but it's still behaving like a perfectly acceptable appliance. I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with it. I don't really want to just sell it off because in reality the car is bad enough that I wouldn't trust it to be there for anybody who would need it to. I thought of doing something dumb with it like hacking it into a ute. Considered using it for KOTH or maybe a Challenge build but don't think it would be worth the effort in either arena. I think for now I'll just let it stick around as a backup car.
Daylan C said:
Drove this pile for the first time today since picking up the Miata. It's needs some attention but it's still behaving like a perfectly acceptable appliance. I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with it. I don't really want to just sell it off because in reality the car is bad enough that I wouldn't trust it to be there for anybody who would need it to. I thought of doing something dumb with it like hacking it into a ute. Considered using it for KOTH or maybe a Challenge build but don't think it would be worth the effort in either arena. I think for now I'll just let it stick around as a backup car.
If the FMV is $200 for the challenge, something like that could easily be a contender for Gastropod. If you want to put a ton of sweat equity in it, you can do a whole lot more.
I don't know what KOTH is, but its a perfectly acceptable chassis for Lemons.
ProDarwin said:
Daylan C said:
Drove this pile for the first time today since picking up the Miata. It's needs some attention but it's still behaving like a perfectly acceptable appliance. I'm having a hard time deciding what to do with it. I don't really want to just sell it off because in reality the car is bad enough that I wouldn't trust it to be there for anybody who would need it to. I thought of doing something dumb with it like hacking it into a ute. Considered using it for KOTH or maybe a Challenge build but don't think it would be worth the effort in either arena. I think for now I'll just let it stick around as a backup car.
If the FMV is $200 for the challenge, something like that could easily be a contender for Gastropod. If you want to put a ton of sweat equity in it, you can do a whole lot more.
I don't know what KOTH is, but its a perfectly acceptable chassis for Lemons.
king of the heap,
Auto – X
Relay Auto-X
Track portion
$1k cars
It only took a year and a half of neglect, abuse and 450+ miles a week for the $200 240k mile Saturn to finally show signs of distress. Seems the cooling system no longer wants to hold water. The radiator was replaced as soon as I got the car because the old one had chunks of it missing after the previous owner's wreck. The hoses and basically everything else is old though. So plenty of things to lose their fluid containment ability. Now to decide to fix my Saturn's water leak or my Miata's oil leak...
Daylan C (Forum Supporter) said:
Seems the cooling system no longer wants to hold water. The radiator was replaced as soon as I got the car
Its probably the radiator
In reply to ProDarwin :
You're saying the only part in the system that isn't 20 years old is the problem? Makes sense actually.
Daylan C (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to ProDarwin :
You're saying the only part in the system that isn't 20 years old is the problem? Makes sense actually.
Replacement radiators in Saturns last anywhere from 5k -50k miles. My average is probably 20k.
I don't think you can get OE radiators anymore, and all of the aftermarket units are garbage. An all aluminum unit will last, but they don't have them for $70 for Saturns like they do for Civics... they are like $500 and not readily available.
Otherwise, water pump wouldn't surprise me, but there should be some symptoms. They are inexpensive, easy to replace, and generally last though.
ProDarwin said:
Daylan C (Forum Supporter) said:
In reply to ProDarwin :
You're saying the only part in the system that isn't 20 years old is the problem? Makes sense actually.
Replacement radiators in Saturns last anywhere from 5k -50k miles. My average is probably 20k.
I don't think you can get OE radiators anymore, and all of the aftermarket units are garbage. An all aluminum unit will last, but they don't have them for $70 for Saturns like they do for Civics... they are like $500 and not readily available.
Otherwise, water pump wouldn't surprise me, but there should be some symptoms. They are inexpensive, easy to replace, and generally last though.
In my experience the plastic parts on the side like to crack. At least replacing the radiator doesn’t take too long.
The OE unit will crack, eventually. The aftermarket units usually leak at the crimp.
