Robert from Windrestrictor is a real innovator, the first to deliver a laser etched illuminated windscreen for the Saturn Sky, and now the first to provide a permanent mount installation for inside the cockpit (mounted behind the seats). PimpMySky.com was able to get ahold of one of new windrestrictors custom-etched for one of the founders of the Phoenix Sky & Solstice Car Club.

At first glance, you will notice that the new windrestrictor is TWICE as thick as the first model. The orginal product, modelled after the Kappashere wind deflector, was created to be mounted in the trunk seal, so it had to be thin. Even at 1/8" of an inch, however, closing the trunk with the windrestrictor in place required and extra-hard slam. More importantly, our recommendation was that you remove the windrestrictor when you put the top up to minimize any strain it might put on the trunk seal, rear window, and roof. With the new in-cockpit model, however, you can leave the product in all the time.

Lynn from the Phoenix club came up with an ingenious solution for packing more clothes in their roadster on trips.  I first learned about the idea of putting hanging clothes behind the seat from Mitch and Dan, a pair of "snowbirds" and GM Roadster members who live in Canada and drive their SKY down to Phoenix for the winter.  In their SKY, they pack everything they need for the entire winter, including a hanging wardrobe pressed behind their seat backs.

Lynn's solution works for a lot of clothes or just a little, basically a strap that rings around the top of the seat, and provides a hook to hang hangers on.  For detailed instructions on how to make one of these, click here to visit the Sky-Sol club website.

During this month's Ticket to Telluride Tour, as we approached the 11,000 foot Red Mountain Pass, one of the locals pointed out that our route crossed six of the twenty highest mountain passes in North America, and we did it all in one day.

The day could not have been more beautiful, not too hot in the lowlands, and at the highest elevations, only the slightest bit of snow in the shadows.  The rarified cool Rocky Mountain air can only be experienced, and never adequately described.

Last week, we went on a spur-of-the-moment drive through beautiful Zion National Park.  Debbie, a club member in Phoenix, said that she was driving her Solstice up to Utah to teach a class for two weeks, so I decided to take a quick weekend trip with her, which for me was an opportunity to visit family in Salt Lake City (including a son who had just graduated from college and was headed to China in two weeks to teach ESL).

On the way up, Debbie's Solstice crossed the 40,000 mile mark, and my SKY crossed 40K on the way back, so you could certainly say that neither of us are shy about taking these roadsters on trips, including this nearly 2,000 mile weekend jaunt.  With gas prices so high, one might naturally pause before making such a trip, but to paraphrase a saying, "Life is not measured in Miles Per Gallon, but in the miles that take your breath away."

On the way up, we decided to detour along North Rim of the Grand Canyon, following the Vermillion Cliffs and skirting down Marble Canyon and crossing the mighty Colorado River at Lees Crossing.  On the radios, we talked about what a huge challenge this trip must have been for covered wagons, and how still today, we were driving dozens of miles out of our way just to get to a place to cross the Colorado river.

Shortly after entering Utah, we turned left into what is considered to be the "back way" into Zion.  This was the downhill route, and for Debbie, the first time she had been to Zion's since she was a teenager.  Personally, my memories are of doing this in a motorhome with my kids, waiting in long RV lines for the multi-mile tunnel to clear so that we could ride single file through the middle of the tunnel as there was no way to get two RVs past each other inside the tunnel.

With the Las Vegas nationals just a week before, we realized that it was a lot to ask of owners to ALSO go to the Route 66 Fun Run the weekend after, so we decided to run this in 2008 as an "exploratory trip" to see if this event is a good idea for 2009.  It turned out that all five cars who decided to join us were SKYs from Arizona and Southern California, and since two of the drivers were named Jerry, we decided to identify ourselves to the parade of nearly 1000 cars as the "Jerry's SKY Club."

This was the 22nd year that the Arizona Route 66 Club has hosted this ride from Selegmen, the official start of Route 66, to Topock, the last Arizona city along Route 66.  According to some long-standing participants, 2008 was the FIRST year that any Saturn SKYs participated.  We were told that there have been some Solstices in the past, and we even saw a red one and a yellow one at various stages of the event, but we weren't sure if they were both officially registered.

Rich and I were delighted to be the first Saturn SKY owners profiled in the old Saturn Signatures Magazine (what eventually became Saturn 360 Magazine).  Since that time, numerous other GM Roadster members that we have met in our travels have been profiled, and we will try, in this blog, to talk about the places we have been and people we have met, including some wonderful roadster owners that you can learn more about through Saturn 360 and Pontiac Performance Magazine.

In the Fall 2007 issue of Saturn Signatures, (interupted, more coming soon)

Searching for an inexpensive alternative to installing ballast-oriented HID lighting kits, we decided to test several sets of inexpensive LED and Xenon replacement bulbs for the Saturn Sky. After contacting five different vendors, we decided to purchase seven different pairs of white zenon and LED replacement bulbs for our test. Our goal was get closer to a cooler white/blue color without loosing illumination. In the end, after trying more than a dozen combinations of lights, the results ranged from totally useless to fairly good, although certainly nothing close to what we have see with true HID lighting.

The photo to the left shows the soft yellow hallogen stock lights that come with the SKY, and the photo to the right is of a Xenon low-beam bulb and a 6-LED driving light. We were hoping for a more modern whiter look, and I think we achieved it.

Now that we have installed several Vertical Door kits for the Saturn SKY, we have been asked to provide more details about the installation process, so we'll try to do an overview here. While the door kits we purchased are customized for the SKY and advertised as reversable bolt-on kits, we should caution that the installation requires a great deal of metalwork, rewiring, and adjustments.

The installation begins with removal of both front fenders plus the fender support brackets. Then, three components need to be removed and replaced in new positions:

1. On the drivers side, the ECM/TCM module and bracket are removed, and the bracket that holds the computer module must be trimmed and relocated
2. Also on the driver's side, the washer bottle needs to be removed, and a new bracket needs to be installed which moves the bottle forward about an inch.
3. On the passenger side, the battery needs to be removed, and the battery tray modified slightly to allow the battery to slide forward about an inch.

In our most recent online poll, we asked readers to rate the most desirable modification for their SKY, and below are the winners:

• <$500 - Stubby Antenna
• <$2500 - Vertical "Lambo" Doors
• +$2500 - Hahn Turbo

For those who think that the Sky looks like a mini-batmobile, Vertical doors are the wings your bat needs to really fly.

During SEMA this year, we had a chance to try out several of the Lambo Door solutions that have been installed on the Saturn SKY, and our favorite products are the bolt-on doors from VerticalDoors.com. While there are several vertical hinge manufacturers, we liked the Vertical Doors products because they are bolt-on solutions and completely reversable, unlike some other solutions that must be welded to the car.