Life Hack (SAW!!!) My Car

Back in February I did my last Life Hack post, about a way to stop small water leaks in your car. I had made mention that it works more often than not, but that very incident that inspired me to write that post turned out to not be one of those times!!!

I had been driving my wife's car, Scruffy, around that time, and it had begun to give me the low water light a couple times a week or so. Huh. I didn't ever see any water at the pump, radiator, or hoses. It wasn't leaking from the heater core. Not losing a lot of water, and never getting hot. Well, I'll season it with some pepper, and if that doesn't do it, it will surely get worse, and I'll be able to see where it's coming from then!!!

Well, it got worse, but I still never saw a place it was leaking from. Finally, it got to where it was needing filled up any time you would drive it for about 15 minutes. The only thing I could come up with was a leaking head gasket burning off water, but it's not running bad or showing any other symptoms. I ran it past a friend of mine who's an awesome shadetree mechanic, and he suggests a compression test to tell the tale. My wife drives it over during the week, and he does the test. Compression is good, so he leaves it running a while to get it hot. I just had been driving it, he left it in one place, and it made a puddle after a while!!! He checks it out, and where the overflow line goes back into the system is leaking some. He touches it to see if it's loose, and the hose fitting breaks off!!! I had known the 2000 and up Saturn 1.9 engines had plastic intake manifolds, but didn't realize that this skinny little part was on it!!!

Turns out there's a couple companies making a repair kit for this problem. First thing, though, had to get it back home to work on, so the tiny little hose barb you see in the first couple pictures is the fix I did on it. Got a stainless hose barb and epoxied it in place!!! That part worked fine, but in the second picture you may be able to make out a crack running down the large hose fitting that I added in a helpful arrow to. I bought it from CarSaturn, who seem to be the original, and looks like a better quality part. A little bit more, but I think it better to buy from the originator, and it's made in the U.S.A.

To install is a little bit involved, as it requires the removal of the intake manifold. Not super tricky, but a lot of things have to come off to get it. Here's something I noticed when I got it off, the EGR tube comes way out into the airflow of the intake. Common sense to me always dictates that the smoother airflow you have, the better things are going to run!!!

So, while I had the hacksaw out, I shortened that sucker up, too!!!

And hacksawing??? Yes, that's exactly what you end up doing, is hacksawing the end of the intake manifold off!!!