coolzzy

I'm a new owner of a 07 Saturn Relay 3 with 3.9L motor. Van has 74k miles on it. I replaced the dash lightbulbs yesterday (EiKO 2721MF direct replacement bulbs), fixed the broken glovebox latch, and detailed vehicle. Today I need to change the engine oil, transmision fluid, front brakes/rotors, and sway bar end links.

Question, I have a few quarts of Mobile 0w30 engine oil left over from my now sold Polaris aTV. Can I put that in this 3.9L engine 50/50 with 5w30 oil without doing any harm? Going into winter here in ID, and it gets cold so I figure the thinner oil will just help cold starts?

Next, transmission fluid. I checked the fluid, and it seems to be clear/yellow??? I thought these vans used Dexron6 full synthetic ATF? It shifts really nicely, but I'm concerned that its not the right fluid in there. I'm am planning on pumping out whats in there and then refilling, then repeat in a few weeks. On my Trailblazer, it was safe to pop off a trans line ,attache a clear tube to it and run it to a bucket. Then start the car and let the pump push out all the fluid in the pan into the bucket, shut car off as soon as fluid stops flowing. The aerator (SP?) pump in the 4l60 trans is safe to do this. anyone know if the same olds true for the 4t60 in our vans?

This is actually my 4th GM U body vehicle (99 Montana, 05 Rendezvous, 06 Terraza came before). I've tried the competetion and keep coming back to GM. For all their faults, they are no worse than the others, and yet they get THE BEST mileage of any mini-van out there. Hondas have bad transmissions, Toyotas are similiar, same with ford and dodge. Its always going to be something, but if you have the quirks worked out of these vans (voltage regulators, power door BCM flash, sway bar end links, etc..) they are really good vehicles. Also, INSTALL A TRANSMISSION cooler! Even if you never plan on towing, these transmissions are soft, and heat kills! for less than $100 you can install a nice transmission cooler that will save you thousands in transmission repairs. Remember the "built in cooler" is just a short trip through the coolant tank in the radiator and back to the transmission, not adequate for crap.
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Let me know what you guys think about the oil though?

Papa Bear

I'd use the 0W-30 oil as/is. Thanks for the info.

Bob

coolzzy

Didn't end up doing the oil today, upon closer inspection it is fresh, It was done when the car was traded in. I still want to do the transmission fluid though, I ordered my tranny cooler today and when it comes in will do it all at once. Anyone want to chime in on my preferred method of getting rid of the fluid in the pan? (unhook the return line from radiator, attach rubber hose that goes to a 5gal bucket and start car. Turn off car when fluid stops coming out, refill transmission)?

coolzzy

Also, as a side note, I plan on bringing the lines to the transmission cooler up over the top of the radiator and down through the hard plastic on top (i'll dremel out a chunk of it for the tubes to pass through), and will be using steel line that I will bend with a tubing bender. It doesn't look like anything even remotely touches that area under the hood when its closed. Concerns? When its done, I'l post pictures, seems pretty simple since there is plenty of room up in front of the condensor and plenty of steel to mount to.

coolzzy

I did the transmission fluid today. Removed the lower chin spoiler to get access to the supply line where it feeds into the radiator. Slid back the plastic keeper, removed the jesus clip retainer with a small pick, pulled line straight out. Slipped a clear rubber hose over the tube, ran other dnd into a 5 gallon bucket and started engine. When air bubbles began coming out I shut off the engine and re-attached the hose to fhr radiator and refilled. It took 5.5 quarts of dex6 to fill it back up. Only snag was that dang jesus clip, you will find out why they are called that as you try to put it back on and it gets stuck in the wrong place or you drop it.

Car shifts better now though snd the fluid is a nice red color, the stuff that came out was tan. I'll repeat this same process when I install the transmission cooler next weekend to get most of the fluid still left in the torque converter out.

I hope to take pictures of my transmission install for a tutorial if anyone is interested.

Papa Bear

Why didn't you do a pan drop and replace the filter while you were at it?

Thanks for the update.

coolzzy

I wanted to but didn't have time to stop and get a filter and the wife needed the car back right away was lucky to get it for 45 minutes for the flush. Maybe when the cooler gets installed I will drop the pan. I've heard of the pan bolts breaking off if allot of miles are on them, and then it's a real pain. I figure if it shifts well and you can swap fluid every year it should do ok. Plus I've experienced difficulty on lots of cars getting the original o-ring out with filter. It's easy to score the wall of the filter bore trying to get it out if it doesn't pull out with the filter. Just my 2 cents.

coolzzy

Istalled the transmission cooler last night,it took about 4 hours but I tend to over engineer things like this. I installed a B&M 70268 cooler rated for 13k BTU which equates to 19k pounds GVW. I had planned on removing the lower bumper fascia to make mounting easier but that turned out to be harder than it originally looked. I ended up just popping out the Saturn grill insert by releasing all the little plastic clips from the back side. This can be done through the hood latch opening if your arms can fit.

I very carefully drilled two holes into the spot welded steel lip just above the condenser and bolted two of the steel mounting braces to it and then bolted the cooler to those as high as possible. The cooler is mounted sideways with the inlet/outlet nipple facing the passenger side of the car. To support the bottom of the cooler I bent one of the remaining braces from the kit so that it could bolt to the front bumper support and down to the bottom hole in the cooler.

Next up I used my dremel to cut a nice sized square hole in the plastic to the left of the hood latch. Then came the fun part. Using 3/8" steel brake line and a heavy duty tubing bender from autozone, I fashioned a steel line to run from the top of the radiator, through the hole I cut, and down into the top port of the cooler. I attempt to do this with the return line but couldn't do it in the space I had without making the bends under the hood as I installed it, so I opted to use the supplied transmission tubing instead.

Next I carefully removed the jesus clip from the top passenger side of the radiator. A firm pull on the tube popped it out, make sure to place a rag underneath because some transmission fluid will come out. Using s small tubing cutter I cut the line in a short straight portion where it clips to the radiator. I smoothed out the cut with some fine sand paper to remove any burs. I then rotated it 180 degrees from its original orientation so it came out of the radiator and pointed straight up at the hood. I attached it to my new steel line with a small piece of tubing and double clamped it.

Next I ran transmission tubing from the other side of the cut line up over the top of the radiator, down through the hole in the plastic and into the lower port on the cooler. Any place I suspected the rubber or steel lines could rub or chafe I used some spare tubing slit lengthwise to slip around the rubber/steel tube and secure with zip ties. When complete there was NO movement in the new tubing or cooler.

I made sure all clamps were tight and started the car to check for leaks and take for a test drive. After a short drive I checked the fluid level and added 3/4 quart of fluid. The cooler got uncomfortably hot to the touch after test driving and idling for several minutes so it is definitely pulling some serious heat from the fluid.

Note that if you do this, have a few of those dang jesus clips handy and they tend to get lost when reinstalling them. You can go to a scrap yard and grab a pocket full from just about any late 90s or newer gm van or truck. Hopefully these pictures help the install make more sense.

<a href=http://s838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/?action=view&current=2012-10-09_23-27-50_664.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/2012-10-09_23-27-50_664.jpg border=0 alt=></a>

<a href=http://s838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/?action=view&current=2012-10-09_23-29-00_697.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/2012-10-09_23-29-00_697.jpg border=0 alt=></a>

<a href=http://s838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/?action=view&current=2012-10-09_23-28-29_128.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/2012-10-09_23-28-29_128.jpg border=0 alt=></a>

<a href=http://s838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/?action=view&current=2012-10-09_23-29-10_608.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/2012-10-09_23-29-10_608.jpg border=0 alt=></a>

<a href=http://s838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/?action=view&current=2012-10-09_23-29-19_298.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/2012-10-09_23-29-19_298.jpg border=0 alt=></a>

<a href=http://s838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/?action=view&current=2012-10-09_23-29-29_221.jpg target=_blank><img src=http://i838.photobucket.com/albums/zz304/coolzzy/cooler/2012-10-09_23-29-29_221.jpg border=0 alt=></a>

Papa Bear

Are you still using the van's radiator for transmission cooling... or just your new coil?

If you are using the radiator's coil that would cause your new coil to run hot as well (~195F)

Looks good

coolzzy

Still using the radiator coil, hot fluid comes out of transmission and goes into radiator, then comes out and goes through the auxiliary cooler before returning to the transmission.