First let me say I pretty much auto retarded. My 94 Saturn SL1 is running way rich. It won't really start. I was having trouble with hard starts so I took it to my neighbors trusty mechanic. He looked at the plugs and they were old etc. He recomended a tune up at $125.00 where he would replace the plugs and fuel filter. When I picked it up from the mechanic it started fine and I drove it home. 2 hours later it wouldn't start. After some cussing and what not I kept trying and I finally got a really hard start that seemed like it wanted to stall. I drove it to the mechanic and he looked at it for a while. He was real busy and it was a Friday afternoon. Well at quitting time he called and said he still hadn't figured it out, that it was running rich (way rich). I then realized how the last couple of weeks my gas milage went from about 23 in the city to 16.
So, the mechanic said he couldn't get to it til Tuesday and I've been looking on the internet trying to figure out anything. I called a Saturn dealer and a rather polite yet flustered fellow said it sounded like the Enginge Coolant Temperature Sensor. From what I've been reading that sort of sounds right, but then again I am an auto retard.
I bought the car 2 1/2 years ago with 118k miles on it. It has always ran hot. Sometimes it starts to overheat so I flip on the heat and the air condition button at the same time and it usually goes right down. I always figured there was some sort of electrical glitch that messed with the cooling fan. After reading a lot of the posts, I think it might be tied in to this problem. This year I've already changed the water pump and alternator. It's been a costly year, especially since I bought the car for really cheap. I don't want to keep pumping money into it, but I'm so broke there's no way I could afford a new car so.....I can either bring it back to my neighbor's trusty, but busy mechanic who hasn't figured it out yet (I've already given him $125.00 for a tune up and I don't think he even changed the oil.) Or I can go to a Saturn Dealer where they said it sounded like the Engine Cooling Sensor and estimated a $110.00 to fix.
Any advise would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for your time and sorry about rambling on.
Rob