Originally Posted By: robertcope
I wonder if a lot of these engines with stuck rings are just not driven hard enough. My wife gets on me occasionally for driving her Rabbit hard, but frankly, I believe that some hard driving is good for an engine. None of mine have ever burned oil or otherwise had issues, and I run them hard most the time.
robert
An 85-125hp saturn is probably driven pretty hard, especially if it's on the interstate running AC.
Another theory on the saturn ring issue is the metal springiness of the rings is relaxed to cut friction, so the rings don't have the power to free themselves from the ever-present goo. There is hope (my hope?) that the aftermarket (sealed power etc) rings have better tension in a "problem solver" fix.
I have one of these s-cars in pieces in my garage as we speak, getting new rings at 200k. The old ones were not baked in place, though the squiggly oil control rings, the ones known for getting bad, were held in with a molasses-like viscous goo. Took considerable scraping to remove a chocolate-brown dry "carbon" from the ring grooves. Cylinder liners still have hatching, pistons still have that micro-machining on the skirts. We'll see how it comes out.
Though I agree synthetic oil should help, there are anecdotes of M1 users from day 1 still running into issues.