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Old February 18th, 2021, 04:35 AM
LordNatedawg LordNatedawg is offline
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Default Re: Nate's Micellaneous Vehicle Thread

Another vehicle I worked on was a 2003 Saturn Ion. It belonged to one of my older siblings. They sold it to a newly licensed younger sibling, but it had a few problems. Of course, those problems quickly became mine to solve. It needed a new alternator. The master cylinder was leaking brake fluid, and the brake fluid was filling up the brake booster. The leak was very slow so the vehicle could still be driven, but obviously it was not an ideal, or safe, situation.


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The alternator was easy. I got one from the junkyard for cheap, threw it in and called it a day. It still works, over half a year later. The master cylinder/brake booster was not easy. As you can see by the below photo the brake booster bolts are hard to access. 3 of them can be reached with a u-joint and some extensions. The 4th bolt required a crow foot and a lot of patience.



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Once those are loose, it's time to go into the engine bay and pull it all out as one assembly. But first, you have to remove the ECM and the fuse box. I also pulled out the coolant reservoir because I wanted to clean out some of the dirt.



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After that, install the booster, bench bleed and install the master, then play the game of "where does this ground strap go?" as I reassembled the engine bay. Once that's done, I bled the brakes at all 4 wheels and had no brake pedal. Replaced the wheel cylinders, thinking that they might be bad, and still had no pedal. Eventually I realized that my master cylinder was bad despite being new. Got it replaced and everything worked great. The last thing I did was restored the headlights. This vehicle was going to my younger sibling. I obviously want it to be safe for them. The TurtleWax headlight kits are super cheap and work amazingly.



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And that's where I finished. The Saturn has a little over 200k miles on it, but it has been a reliable vehicle for its current owner. If nothing else, it makes an amazing first car. Fuel efficient and reliable. What more can you ask for?
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