My wife drives a 2010 Saab 9-3 Sportcombi with the 2.0T/6 speed manual. Yesterday while riding with her it refused to accelerate at a stop light. When she let the clutch out, it refused to gain any RPM and jerked and died. I thought that she screwed up her take off. Restart, it did it again but didn't die, just jerked at extremely low RPM halfway through the intersection. I was flipping out and she put the clutch back in, gave it a moment, reved it up a tad and drove away like nothing was amiss. I know it wasn't her driving. Saab people, what do you think? Also non-Saab people too!
Throttle position sensor?
Is the Throttle Body gunked up (not sure if there's a throttle plate or not on that model)?
This happened late last night so I have had zero time to check. I THINK that this model has a plate and is a pretty straight forward motor. It is a Gen 1 Ecotec derivative.
Powar
SuperDork
4/16/14 10:34 a.m.
Check engine light? The codes are pretty descriptive.
I have had this happen twice on my 9-5. I know 9-3 has a different motor but the cause of in for me was the plastic intake pipe came off the throttle body. They are hard to get seated and tight after taking it off. It scared the crap out of me the first time it happened but at least it was an easy and quick fix.
No CEL at the moment, I will check for anything stored in there though.
I will check the intake seating tonight. It is pretty rare and only lasts a few seconds so this makes me think that an electrical part is dying on me.
Aspen
Reader
4/16/14 1:35 p.m.
Some folks have had throttle body issuea that sound like this. Try saabcentral.com and search in the 9-3SS forum.
By the way the auto and std 9-3 both are 6 speeds, had to read down to determine if it was manual or auto trans.
Sorry, thought the auto was a 5 speed. Edited
didn't a lot of these have an ignition module problem ?
Spark plugs and wires? My Miata goes crazy like this when it needs new plug wires. Runs like a turd under 1,500 RPMs, then 2,000 RPMs, then 3,000... unless I change them. If you think you're at the mileage where this needs to be done anyway, you might want to try it.
it might be the coil pack... Time to pull it off the engine and take a peek to see if the individual coils are starting to leak and fry
In reply to iceracer and confuZion3:
The 9-3SS has a coil on plug setup; no DI cassette, but no plug wires either. I'm shocked there are no CELs being thrown if it happens with regularity; if it's a coil you should definitely be seeing one. I'd doubt it is tune-up related, sounds to me like either an intermittent air leak (common) or a failing MAF or other sensor.
