Engine Rebuild
Originally I was just going to do a head swap, putting on a port and polished head that was milled down to increase compression slightly. Well that goal has been change to a full on engine rebuild. Below is my progress so far:

Port and Polish Head - Started 12/04
Started working on a head that will be finished sometime in February, end of March at the latest. Plan is to port and polish the head and have it milled down 0.035" - 0.040". Net result should be a increase in compression to around 10:1 and a HP increase around 8 horses. Also at the same time I will put on my MidPen Motorsports performance cams, which with the OBX header, custom exhaust, and tuning the ApexI unit should gain me another 10 - 15 HP. Here's the head:

Heres a before and after so far on the cleaning of individual pieces. I'll probably have most of the individual stuff done before the end of the year...then I have to decide if I want to keep the old valves, which arn't looking that great, or buy new ones:

The valves are starting to come clean but there a pain:

Before and after of the head itself (12/28/04):

Intake runner with the valve guides sticking out before porting (12/29/04):

The Exhaust ports after using Dykem Blue on them and scribing the outline of the new exhaust gasket. Everything within the scribe lines will be grinded out (12/29/04):

Started and finished most of the P&P work. I still need to smooth out the combustion chamber and exhaust ports...the bits I had were too big for the tiny exhausts (12/29/04):

And heres the intakes. Look at the one above and you see all the flaws from casting (looks like styrofoam and there are bumps in spots) and after the porting its smoother but not too smooth (12/29/04):

Finished polishing the exhaust and combustion chamber. Doesn't look like much but the CC and exhausts are now smooth to the touch. I washed it down again but it will need a professional washing after its milled down. The exhausts were widened about 2mm on each side and 1mm on the top (1/1/05):

Well I wasn't happy with the job I did last week so I went over it again. I bought a dremmel kit that had some 60 and 120 grit rolls (1/2" and 1/4") and I removed a lot more material from the exhausts and repolished it. I think its finally done, with my part at least. This coming week I will look for a machine shop to mill it down, reseat the valves, clean and pressure test it, and put it together. Heres what it looks like now, which you can compar to the above...(1/8/05):

Update - Still haven't found a machine shop....will work on getting the rest of the stuff I need (1/16/05).

Another update - Found a shop to do my work. The head and all its pieces is packed up and ready to ship out this Monday (2/12/05).

More pretty good news - Machine shop should be done with my head next week. Also I found a place to do a dyno run thats open for either next Saturday or the week after. Already had them schedule me in a time so I can get some HP numbers before the head swap. (2/25/05)

Just got back from the dyno. The car in its current state put down 125HP to the wheels. Since a stock Saturn puts 124HP to the crank, and you have a average loss of 15% through the transmission (124 - 18 = 106 at the wheels) this means my car with the current mods is almost 20 HP above stock. Go me! (3/5/05)

Heads done and assembled. Should get it next week hopefully. I'll post some nice pictures once I do. (3/19/05)

Got the head back a couple days ago. Heres it assembled. (4/8/05)

And here it is after I painted it with some hi temp engine enamel (4/11/05):

Got my valve cover wrinkle coated. Here it is done with its painting with a mockup of what the new emblem will look like (6/8/05):

Update (9/1/05): I'm pretty much done cleaning everything up and I bought a set of Crower rods. Just need to order pistons, have the block bored out to the pistons specs, and have the crank polished/balanced and I'll start reassembly.

Update (12/22/05): During the last couple months I've gotten everything and started reassembly. In fact I'm almost done. All my new work is being updated at my website http://www.allanssaturn.com instead of here. Heres the last picture I'll post up here:

LAST UPDATE (11/1/07): I'm gonig to update my website www.allanssaturn.com and not this page because its too hard to keep stuff in both locations. I'll add a couple things here though to keep people interested. :)