Garage Day at Bill's Place

January 27, 2001

Lots of impending car projects had cropped up over the winter, so we decided to take a chunk out of some of them at another garage day. This one was held at Bill's parents' place in Bow, NH.

And this is about all we saw of our gracious host during the day. Bill had the new SPS exhaust to install on his SL2. We were all curious how it would sound, perform, and so on. But unfortunately, the entire day was spent just trying to get his old exhaust off! Actually, half the day was spent trying to get the right attachments for the dremel, but from there all we heard was a sound like a dentist's drill coming from underneath his car. Bill continues the story of the following day: "I cut as much as I could off with the dremel while continuing to pound at it and douse it with WD-40. My dad and I ended up going to HD to get a dremel with some power. I forgot what it was like... :) Got the entire head off that bolt, and while I'm banging on it, Gary shows up. I'm not sure what time it is, because I don't have my watch on. After I explain the situation, he decides to hold the cat for me while I bang. BAM! Out comes the second bolt. BAM! BAM! Out comes the third bolt. And the people rejoice. Yay."

Flats also did some exhaust work on his SC2, replacing his stock muffler with a Dynomax Super Turbo on the stock exhaust. While removing the wheel, we managed to break one of his lug bolts. It seems that when Firestone rotated his tires, they cross threaded the lug nut and jammed it on with an air gun! Fortunately, the parts department at Saturn of Concord was open till 1:00, and we were able to get a bolt and replace it. SPOC of NE is about to place a ban on working on the right rear wheel of green SC2s at garage days, since they've caused serious trouble at both garage days we've had so far! (Justin's right rear drum brake was a pain at the last one.)

Cris' project for the day was to install his white face gauges. This is how much you have to disassemble the dashboard to get the instrument panel out. What a pain! But he did it. Although these are the gauges that SPS sells, we noticed some very basic flaws in it. The upshift light now says "Low Fuel," for example.

But not to worry - despite Matt's warnings that doing so would be impossible, Cris got everything back together and working again. Granted, it took a couple of tries. The holes through the center of the gauge faces for were too small for needles to fit without binding. Overall, it looks great, especially with the needles painted red. But this looks like yet another case of the Saturn aftermarket getting shafted with poorly designed parts, yet we buy them anyway because that's all that's available.

Gary worked on installing racing harnesses in his SC2, with Justin's help since he's done it before. Though the procedure was relatively simple, we didn't complete this job. The holes in the harness brackets were smaller than the seat belt bolts, so he had to drill and file through the rather solid metal to enlarge them enough. We got the shoulder straps in on both sides, but not the lap belts.

Meanwhile, Justin showed off a prototype of the rumored new Saturn Speedster - cleverly disguised as a 1990 Miata. Justin and Brian borrowed Bill's G-Tech Pro and ran some tests on nearby I-89. 0-60 in 8.6 seconds, 1/4 mile in 16.5 seconds at 86mph. This is a little slower than a DOHC Saturn, and over half a second slower than Justin ran in his own SC2 at New England Dragway. The Miata is smaller and lighter, but has a smaller engine, and also two people on board at the time. Still, in a straight line, a DOHC Saturn is faster.

Matt and Justin learned the ins and outs of paintless dent removal by fixing a small dent in the hood of Matt's SL2. The procedure was simple. Prop the hood open, Justin steadied it, and Matt repeatedly punched it from the inside. After several whacks, the dent was miraculously gone!

Brian was concerned about the brakes on his SL2. They were making a lot of noise, and the ABS didn't seem to be stopping the car evenly. We asked around to see who of us also had experience with ABS equipped Saturns, and Flats took Brian's car for a couple of quick stops down a nearby side road. His diagnosis was that it was working just as it is supposed to. Seeing as how Brian's previous cars have been an AMC Eagle (the Uglymobile) and various old Jeeps, ABS is a rather new experience for him.

Brian also showed us his in-car GPS navigation system. It consists of a laptop computer running off the cigarette lighter off a power inverter, a simple GPS receiver, and software to put it all together. It was quite amusing to watch it calculate the position where we were parked - right in the middle of a nearby side street, according to the GPS. But while not accurate enough to guide a smart missle into a mailbox without touching the sides, it's close enough to figure out where you are, where you've been, and where you're going. Brian and Justin plan to try using it in some TSD rallies later this year.

As usual, it was a good time, and everyone learned a lot about working on their Saturns! Well, except Justin and his Miata.