Planes, Trains, and Buses - A Saab Story

OK Time for an update... 

I've put about 7k on it now, it leaks some oil, but is a nice quiet ride to work and back, and the HVAC works well enough that I was actually getting cold in the car yesterday when it was 90+ outside.  I'm rather well-insulated, so this is kind of unusual for me.

I finally tackled the parking brake cables today.

Its a simple job, which interestingly is not documented anywhere on the various Saab maintenance sites.  Probably for the best...

The splitter for the left/right cables is on the bottom of the car, conveniently located above the exhaust center section heat shield.

Fortunately the exhaust is almost new, so I took out the rear muffler unbolted the center section and kind of slid it around to work around it.  Downside of the mid-rise lift is that there's pretty poor access to the middle of the car; no way could I get the center section out. 

The cables were completely frozen into the housings, so I ended up using a bicycle cable cutter to chop them off at the splitter up inside the car.

The right side gas tank strap was kind of snug, so I had to loosen it up enough to get the housing out.  No problem on the left side though.

The housings have rubber hangers that I was able to slide off to snake the housing through its path:

New cables happily installed, along with some of my blood as a signature or something...

BTW, the Harbor Freight light you can see in this pic is great, other than I wish the battery life was better. 

Of course, any project I fumble through must have some element of failure.

Well today we got the bonus package.

The parking brake return springs hook onto the dust shields.  The left side is crusty but good to go.  Right side, not so good to go...

The rusty bit that looks rotated forward is the spring attachment point. 

So this results in my first instance of 'Orphan Car Problems".  eEuro still lists the backing plates at $30, but out of stock.  Seems that the closest source of said backing plate is the UK, still $30, but longer shipping.  I thought about dragging out the welding stuff, but there's really nothing solid to work with.  Oh well, works ok for the moment.  Good news is that the UK supplier also has some stuff I want for my C900, so I can combine shipping.

So issue number two involved my lift peeing itself:

I got the car up on the lift around 630, had to go do some work and make some calls, came back out around 9 and saw this. At first I thought it was water from the AC drain on my wife's car, but its hydraulic fluid.

It looks like its coming from here:

Not sure if this is a bleed screw, pop off valve, or what?  I thought it was an allen screw, but doesn't seem to be.

I assume I need to rebuild this cylinder.  The PO had told me he rebuilt the other one a year or so ago. 

And the next project for this car will be some new seating:

Sport seats from an '03.  Much better condition, no rips or tears, and they haven't been crushed into submission like the drivers' seat currently in the car.  They're supposedly plug and play going from a newer into older car, so we'll find out.  I also need to clean the carpets, which will be much easier without the front seats in place.

Cool little detail thing about many Saabs that a lot of owners never notice - there are little pockets on the front of the seats

XLR99 (Forum Supporter) said:

So issue number two involved my lift peeing itself:

I got the car up on the lift around 630, had to go do some work and make some calls, came back out around 9 and saw this. At first I thought it was water from the AC drain on my wife's car, but its hydraulic fluid.

It looks like its coming from here:

Not sure if this is a bleed screw, pop off valve, or what?  I thought it was an allen screw, but doesn't seem to be.

I assume I need to rebuild this cylinder.  The PO had told me he rebuilt the other one a year or so ago. 

There should be no bleed screw at that point between the cylinder wiper and the rod seal. Technically, there should only be a fine film of hydraulic oil that gets past the rod seal to lubricate the rod and the rod wiper. The indent may just be a place to engage a tool to screw off the head to the cylinder. You may be able to find a complete repair kit for the cylinder, if not, take picts of the parts and I can help identify.

In reply to XLR99 (Forum Supporter) :

I didn't know sport seats existed. Please post about the install. If plug/play, I'm going to be on the hunt for a pair of those. 

I've had my 04 Arc wagon for about 1-1/2 years now and just discovered the front pockets on a road trip last week -- fantastic little touch, especially since the storage space, compared to the cubbies in my c900s, is so disappointing. 

HobieRCR, thanks, I'll prb get to work on it next weekend.

ProcaineStart - they are from the 03(maybe 02 as well)-up Aero.  I know about the storage thing- you can also find a set of B pillars from an older car that have a little net thing on them perfect for sunglasses.  You can kind of see one in the first pic

So today we went from this:

to this:

The new seats have roughly 234% more lateral support, and don't cause the driver to list to port the whole time behind the wheel. 

Old vs New comparison:

A bit of wear on the drivers' bolster, but far better than the originals... I spent some time with leather cleaner and conditioner, as well as a bunch of time with a drill brush and bissell cleaning 19 years of coffee stains out of the carpets.

It seems to be plug and play for the most part.  The only tools you need are a T25 (preferrably on a ratchet with a couple extensions due to the tight quarters) and a T40.

The drivers' side all works perfectly.  Passenger side I already had to swap the fore-aft motor, as the original was siezed, and I'll prb also need to do something with the front tilt motor as well. 

Upon starting up, the airbag light is on.  According to some quick googlation, it was caused by turning the ignition on with a seat unpluged and will reset itself soon.  Stay tuned.

In reply to XLR99 (Forum Supporter) :

Sweet -- thanks for the follow-up install details. All good w/the airbag light?

The sport seats are great, seriously as comfortable as anything I’ve ever sat in. They crush, for instance, the seats in my 2013 LS 460 and are the thing I miss most about the Aero rescue wagon. 

Yes, the seats are awesome.  I now spend about two hours a day in the car.  Between seats that arent destroyed, new floor mats, and a few hours of cleaning, it's almost like a new car inside. 

Airbag light is still on.  From what I read, it's like 50 start cycles to clear the code (?)  My OBD2 reader doesn't do ABS/SRS, and a Tech2 isnt in the budget right now, so I'll deal with it.  I think by next week I will have done the 50.

Today's mini-project involved the world's longest valve cover gasket change, in large part due to non-car related issues...

At first, things looked good:

Nice and clean inside.  I've already done two oil changes on it, but apparently it was actually sort of maintained before.  On the down side, black RTV took awhile to clean out.  No pictures were taken after this one...

At this point, I figured 'I should bring the dog out so he can hang out with me', and things went rapidly downhill.  Somehow he twisted out of my grip before I could get down the steps, and I spent about 15 minutes wishing we had gone back to training after the covid shutdown. 

He almost got hit by one berkleytard who was far to self-involved in looking at kiddie porn on his phone to slow down from 55 or so, and passed about 18" from him while looking at me, then flipped me off.  Another one was kind enough to pull up about 5' behind me and lean on his horn for ~40 seconds while I stood on the double yellow at the railroad tracks, trying to corral him and prevent him from being killed. 

I finally was able to grab him when he dropped the coffee cup he had found, and I made a nasty piece of bubble wrap look enticing enough to come within range to snag him.

Any small hope I had of people being able to work together 'for the common good'  is gone at this point...  I don't know, as an occasionally responsible and empathetic person, when I see someone trying to corral a wayward animal, I usually park the car near the centerline with the 4 ways on to slow people down, and do my best to help them.   As a long-time custodian of greyhounds, I still always have a lead in the car 'just in case'.  Someone I used to work with has a great story of a 6 mile chase of his brother's greyhound, involving rides from three separate passers-by and a K9 officer.

Apparently now 'we' just E36M3 on anything that intrudes on our selfish suburban feabulousness and self-involved timetable of nothingness...

So, after an hour or so to cool off, I head back outside (dog remained securely in the house).  At some point, I've managed to dump valve cover bolts everywhere, and am missing a bunch...  Lots of time with magnets on sticks, and I find all but one and verify that I didn't lose one inside the head.  Close enough...

The Saab has a rubber grommet where the PCV plugs into the valve cover, and this one is quite hard and perished.  In my garage and basement, in many poorly organized and unlabelled boxes, I have 99.9999665% of the items one might need to completely build up a Saab B235 engine, including a few valve cover bolts and a complete head that somehow ended up downstairs.  Also found  a set of control arms with bushings and ball joints I didn't know I had, so that's a win... 

The one thing I don't have is that grommet.  Ugh.  After a brief test drive, it seems that some anaerobic sealer is doing slightly better than the bare crusty grommet. 

While I'm up on a step ladder rummaging around in boxes on the shelves over the workbench, my son comes out with the escapee-dog and asks'why is he in his crate?' 

'You didn't hear me calling the dog, yelling for you, F-bombing everything, and horns blowing?"

'No'

My plan at 0600 was to do a bunch more little detail fixes to the car, and try to get my lift cylinder apart, but due to heat and general life failure, I ended up on the couch with a glass of Evan Williams. 

Wow. Damn dog threw it all sideways and fast. Hope the Evan Williams takes some of the frustration away.

Sooo, brief update two years later...

The $500 9-5 now has about 240k on the odometer, it remains my primary commuter car for ~80 mikes a day.  Its a nice comfortable ride.  Also it still acts as the family's primary dog chauffeur appliance.  He likes the heated seat in winter. 

My dog is still an idiot, BTW.

Here we're enroute to rescuing my daughter at the airport after a week of weaponized stupidity with inlaws in Cancun.  He discovered thar he can stretch his car harness enough to lay on the console and be almost in the front seat. Shifting is painful this way...

Apart from routine mx, and a new set of cheap ebay tires, I just drive it and add some oil and coolant every few weeks.  It has a slight water pump leak, but I keep pushing it off given how miserable a WP change is.  

I previously had a Parrot Mki9200 wired into the stereo to give me bluetooth phone and audio. The original stereo died, probably due to capacitors drying up (dad is an EE, mensa member and tells me this is most likely scenario). 

I had heard on Saab forums how hard it is to fit a new head unit to the 9-5, so I was hesitant. I llterally soldered in 14(?) connections color for color and have a working cheap Boss double DIN with Android Auto. Completely drama-free, just use the blue-white amp wire.  The steering wheel control  box from Amazon was defective, but the head unit works great.  I'll probably delve back into SWC at some point.

I got a panel mount USB and drilled out a stock switch blank, so I just have a 1ft charger/AA connector, and used the stock stereo cage for now. Its a friction fit and the bezel isnt a great fit, but 21 year old beater car, so its all good.  Also note the 9-5 wallpaper...