I have a 2003 Saturn Vue V6 that needs new vacuum chamber springs (P/N 93175463). The problem is, because it’s a Saturn, GM has discontinued the part, which seems odd. I can find other parts for my Saturn cars (yes, I bought two of them right before GM pulled the plug), but not this.
Now, I’ve already asked my mechanic, and the local GM dealer, and I’ve called GM parts direct, and I’ve checked eBay, but I can’t find this part anywhere. I’ve tried junkyards too, but the problem is that this is a little spring inside the top part of the engine, and no one wants to sell me just the spring, because it would make the rest of that assembly useless. So I have to buy the whole assembly for a few hundred dollars, or a whole used engine for a few grand.
Normally at this point I would just forget about it. The Vue still runs. The problem, however, is that this keeps on tripping the check engine light. I could keep driving and ignore that light, of course, but eventually something else is going to go wrong. And then I won’t get it fixed because I’m ignoring the check engine light.
Like I said, I’ve called GM, but they shrugged and gave me some BS about the car simply being too old to keep parts in stock. Which sounds like BS to me. The car is barely 15 years old. It only has 130k miles. It runs great otherwise.
So does anyone know where to find discontinued parts? Or is there another car with a similar enough engine that I could swap something in?