My daughter has an 01 DII with the following VIN number SALTK124. Does this have the SAI on the motor? Can the motor be replaced with a non SAI motor? Thanks D*

 

Not sure If the VIN will tell you if you have SAI. One sure fire way to figure it out is to open the hood and look. If your motor has the below pictured valves on both sides of the motor then you are SAI equipped. Can you replace this motor with a non SAI motor? Sure, the only differnt about the motor are the ports in the heads that allow connection to the SAI valves.

 

Thanks for the answer. The motor does not have what is shown in the photo that you provided. I'm hoping that's a good thing. I have read that the SAI can be a real pain. D*

 

It can be, though easily removed if you're willing to deal with the check engine light. I was and so I cut mine out, removed the pump, all the piping, and welded up the plugs.

As frank said, the only difference in the engines is the heads. SAI heads have ports to thread the SAI into, non-SAI heads either don't have the ports at all or have plugs to fill the ports. If you switch from SAI to non-SAI, you'll have to

A.) live with the check engine light and plug up the SAI vacuum line
B.) remove the head plugs if the heads have them and reinstall your SAI
C.) swap the heads if the non-SAI engine does not have the plugs

All of the above work fine.