hey Saturn forum,

i thought that i would do another review on a product that i just bought for my car. My SC2 is automatic (unfortunately) and i wanted to do something to get rid of the old stock automatic shifter ****/lever with the button on the side. I did some searching and i purchased a new stylish shifter **** from streetflame.com for $16 shipping included. Its a spring loaded, red aluminum **** with a carbon fiber collar wrapped around it. It took all of 5-10min to install and it looks 10x better than the stock plastic one. It took me awhile to get it adjusted just right so that it wasnt holding down the button that allows you to shift through the gears, but once it was on i was very impressed. The grip is not too big and not too small either... i give this one a 9 out of 10. I would have given it a perfect 10 but this style **** is ONLY available in red. I would have rather had it in stainless steal, blue, or chrome. Overall, this is a nice addition for those of you that drive automatic vehicles that wanna add some flash to your interior. Tell me what you think??

 

I agree, a stainless or blue accent would be more to my liking ...

 

i believe there is some silver paint laying around in the garage somewhere. Red just seems a bit out of place considering that i dont have anything red IN or ON my car. Looks like im going back to the drawing board... either im gonna paint the ****, or upgrade the interior with a new color (which i need to do anyways, looks like a cat clawed my roof liner and carpet)

 

I'm going to a major automotive swap meet today and see if I can find some seat belts. I need a set to install in my Spirit. There are custom steering wheels available that can be installed where the dopy looking air bag steering wheel used to live and on my Saturn the Air Bag material has been damaged badly by the sun and it could use a cosmetic improvement. I guess I am not a fan of the present fad of Grey Mouse Fur as an interior option. I need to get the seats re-upholstered on my Saturn too. I had the head liner done a couple of years ago and it still looks like new. I dunno, Red may not be the best accent color but with a red steering wheel and the grey mouse fur to back it up, a steering wheel my just be the touch that you need.
http://www.jcwhitney.com/revolution-.../p2028482.jcwx
or
http://www.thefind.com/cars/info-gm-steering-wheel
Just saying

 

You know, ive been on Jcwhitney a million times and i never thought once to look up steering wheels. Those ones you showed are nice!!! That is definitely going on my list of parts for my interior upgrade. Im pretty proficient with a sewing machine so im trying to mock up a design on paper for the interior (color scheme, fabric type, etc). Also found that you can switch out the instrument cluster from a few other GM model cars, so if i can get those to light up red as well i think the inside will look nice and spiffy

 

I always liked the appearance of the Red dash lights of the Pontiac Fiero I owned. I think at the time all Pontiac's had Red dash lights. Although I admidt it was probably harder to see at night. Although today individuality in automotive design a feature that used to be a GM trademark has now been replaced by Badge Engineering or as some people more politically apt than I prefer as Corporate Platform Design a concept where everything has 4 doors and looks like all the others.
It has been years since I actually bought something from J.C. Whitney (or their sister company Warshowski (Spelling) and frankly to me J.C. Whitney is to automotive Custom design as Loony Tunes is to fine art I had a bit of a bother getting to the swap meet. It started with my mobility scooter having a bad battery when I went to load it on the van, followed by blowing a tire about 10 min later followed by discovering my phone service was dead and those were the high points. The steering wheel vendor did not have a booth at least while I was there, 2 hours before the end of the meet but I did find seat belt parts. In the right color and Chevrolet seat belt bits and pieces actually fit my AMC Spirit application and mated with the rest of the parts and after washing the belts to get rid of Groady (the parts cleaner available from Harbor Freight is like magic making dirt and grime go away) I got them installed yesterday evening. They look good and if some one is going to get close enough to them to worry about the logo that says Chevrolet rather than AMC I will worry about that later. I also ordered a replacement tire from Tire Rack on line so it will be here in 3 or 4 days. A P215 55 r17 delivered to the door for $142 works for me. And I am finding that the tire store I have been using satisfactorily for the most part has been less than honorable about what tires were or were not available. I will say though that having a bead breaker, a bubble balancing Tire machine and a handful functional manual tire irons, a rubber mallet and a collection of tire weights is working to my advantage right now.
I ran across this information a while back:
http://www.piperowner.org/forums/topic.html?id=84979
which allows changing the color of a dashboard lit by light bulbs. This and related information does work. But like this thread indicates it has been awhile since I have actually used the data and don't know where I would go to find the material.
Probably the reason I stopped using J.C. Whitney was that specific stuff was available from a specialty vendor not only better quality but cheaper and more so a wider variety than J.C.listed.
But on the other hand, in some cases general application functional cheap stuff was usually only available there.
Dunno, I keep a catalog on hand but while I do buy parts from a variety of sources I have not used J.C. Whitney as I said, in years.
What a lot of automotive hobbyists really do not understand is that if they have a need for some hard to find specific marque unique parts or are trying to sell the same joining a National Car Club that features your particular car is a good investment of generally about $35.00. Not that joining the club is the objective, getting ahold of the club classified ads which usually are included with the bi-monthly news letter is the objective.
That is where the people who have interest in that particular car honored by the club exist and those people not only have the money an interest in spending it on parts you might have for sale, but that is where the reproduction people are going to hang out looking for sales. Why there? Reproduction of parts is bloody expensive and the market is generally a niche market. While large enough to make it profitable to be in the business, it is generally way too small to be profitable to advertise in national general public automotive information magazine.
While Hemmings is a great publication, I have yet to actually buy something from their classified ads nor have I ever seen an ad from one the AMC vendors I have bought things from in a Hemmings News magazine. I have though spent a right fair amount of pocket change to a number of AMC reproduction and parts guys who can always be found in an AMC national club news letter classified ads. I have even bought Saturn Parts from Hoseppi, and when has his business been in Hemmings News?

 

Buy less bling and get some Mr Clean.

 

Hahaha. Yes, pardon the dust... i always drive with the windows down everywhere i go, so dust accumulates pretty quick. The center console was cleaned shortly after the pic was taken. I guess i shoulda cleaned it first before the shot