- I'm hoping someone here can give some advice on this one -- my '94 SL2 has a PS pump that is going out; from the looks of things the pulley can be completely bypassed without affecting the belt tensioner? I do have AC. Can anyone who has tried this tell me what length the belt should be? Unfortunately not a lot of extra time or $ $ to replace the pump right now. thanks - Timothy
I'm not much of a saturn man but i would venture that you could remove the pulley or entire unit and measure your new distance sans pump and buy a belt that fit. You can buy belts in increments. You'll have to be sure your new belt still routes properly and all pulleys are driven the correct way. This is a band-aid until you can get the pump. I have never worked on a saturn, your model may need the pulley there to route properly. I suppose you could also just pull the hoses, cap the outputs on the pump and fill it back with fluid (just to lubricate so it doesn't sieze) and not mess with the belt routing. When you say the pump is going out, do you mean it's about to sieze or its losing its ability to generate pressure? HTH Carl
I have permanently removed the power steering pump on my '92 SC during its transformation into a track-only car. I would STRONGLY recommend against doing this on a street-driven vehicle. Some Saturns came with manual steering from the factory and had a different steering rack (plain SL and SW models, I believe). But if you bypass the pulley on a car that came with a power steering rack, your stationary pump then becomes a restriction. As you turn the steering wheel, I'd imagine the rack is trying to push the fluid which will not want to easily go through a pump that is not running. When I removed my pump, I put a resorvoir tank in its place which allows the fluid to flow freely when turning the wheel. If using the steering rack in this way that was meant to be assisted by the pump, parallel parking becomes extremely difficult. Unless the car is rolling at least 10 mph, it takes a huge amount of effort to turn the wheel. How much? Turn your key on but leave the car off. While your car is standing still, attempt to turn the wheel lock-to-lock. That's what it will feel like all of the time below 10 mph or whenever you try to do any low-speed parking. In addition, when I removed my pump I had to swap the idler pulley from a smooth model to one that had grooves as the belt was now routed differently and the opposite side now traveled over the idler. But I removed my AC compressor at the same time. I'm not sure if any Saturns over the years came without a power steering pump but with air conditioning. If they did, you'd need to find a belt routing diagram from one, get that size belt, and determine if your current idler pulley will do the job. You can find a replacement pump on eBay very cheaply, probably less than $30 or so. You would save a lot of trouble by just replacing the pump. Good luck. Lane [ lane (at) evilplastic.com ]
