New Stuff

A box of new stuff arrived today from SaabPartsOnline.com. I was a little less than impressed with the fact that it took two weeks for them to complete my order, especially when I had to pay $36 for basic shipping and handling. At least they paid extra for Saturday delivery. Anyway, here's what I got:

Two front control arm bushings:

I'm hoping these will help out a little bit with the wishy-washy steering I've got. With 182k miles on it the original suspension seems to be getting a little tired. Hopefully these will tighten it up a bit.



Rear Trailing Arm Bushings:

Hopefully these will get rid of the God-awful creaking/groaning coming from my rear suspension. The noise is doable over the summer but when it gets cold they're like finger nails down a chalk board. Unfortunately they need to be pressed into place so they're not easy to replace.


And finally, an SAI (Secondary Air Injection) check-valve.
This little bugger is responsible for the SAI pump failure I talked about back in August. Basically the SAI pump blows ambient air into the exhaust right at the manifold when the engine is hot. This air with a rich running engine makes the catalytic converter warm up faster, so Saab can call the 9-5 a Low Emission Vehicle (LEV). Once the pump shuts off though, this one-way valve stops exhaust from being able to flow from the engine to the pump. The condensation from the exhaust is what ruined my pump. The valve is also leaking enough that I can now hear the infamous "tick-tick-tick" of an exhaust leak and it also reaks of un-converted exhaust under the hood.

It's going in Friday for the control arm bushings, I'm going to do the check valve myself Saturday, and I'm not sure when the rear trailing arm bushings will be put in. I'm also bringing it to an exhaust shop on Monday to have the new exhaust put in. By the end of the week it should feel like I bought a new car. :)

Coolant Bypass Valve

I got in my car to go to work this morning and was greeted by "COOLANT FLUID LOW" on the SID. You have GOT to be kidding me. Anyway, sure enough the coolant reservoir was empty, and there was coolant all over my driveway and down the firewall of the engine. I ordered my new coolant bypass valve this evening. Grr...
























Meanwhile I updated the running tab for maintenance on the car. Between myself and the previous owner we've blown $10,387. I've spent $5,213 in the 19k miles and two years I've driven it. I paid $5k for the car, haha.

Some Cool V6 3.0t Pictures

I ran into these on the GM Media site a while back. I thought they were interesting to look at so I figured I would share them.




























































































Not the engine, but a nice looking picture. Man I wish my interior still looked like that.

Seafoam

I saw some stuff online about Seafoam and decided to give it a try. It claims to do wonderful things for your engine like dissolve carbon deposits, clean out the fuel injectors, etc, etc, so I figured my engine with 179k miles on it could probably use some cleaning out. You're supposed to induct 1/3 of the can through the intake, pour 1/3 into your oil, and 1/3 in your gas tank. I did the intake induction today, and was too afraid to dump it in my oil so I poured the rest in my full fuel tank and rocked the car back and forth to stir it in there. There are some pretty intense Seafoam videos on YouTube (Click here), and I was a little disappointed mine didn't smoke like them, but oh well.

I ended up pulling the PCV hose of the throttle body and attaching a long piece of vaccum tube to the nipple. Then I pinched the hose and sucked in some Seafoam. I stalled the car about seven times because I sucked too much in. After I used ~1/3 of the can I stalled it for good and let it sit for 12 min. It was a little slow to turn over but it did, it smoked less than it does on a cold winter morning, haha.


I took it for a quick test drive around the block and didn't notice any huuge improvements. It might have been slightly smoother, but I can't really tell until I drive it more. Tomorrow morning starting it cold will be a good indicator. It's been stalling almost every morning after it idles down or if I put it in gear.

Secondary Air Injection (SAI)

Starting in 2000 Saab put an SAI system on the V6. It consists of a little electric pump that sucks in fresh air and blows it into the exhaust manifolds. This extra air/oxygen plus a little extra fuel warms up the catalytic converter faster so it starts reducing emissions faster. The pump only comes on when you start the engine cold (engine temp less than 130 deg F) and runs for a little less than a minute. (Can you say useless? )

Anyway, a few weeks ago on a hot day I got in my car and there was no air coming from the vents. To make a long story short the SAI pump shares a fuse with the cabin fan. Through some playing (and lots of fuses) I found out the SAI pump was causing the fuse to blow. I unplugged the pump in the engine bay and waited for the check engine light (CEL) to come on. It took about a week to show up with a P0410, Secondary Air Injection fault.

Today I took the battery out and removed the pump to dissect it and I think you will be interested in seeing what I found.

1. Here's the pump more or less before taking it apart:















2. Here's the air filter cover taken off. But hey, where's the air filter? What the hell...??















3. I can't get the blades the turn, wow the motor must really be fried:















4. Oh wait, what's in there??















The needle nosed pliers say...















5. Yep, the darn thing inhaled its own air filter.










































I'm thinking now I should dig a little further into the SAI system and dig out the rest of the chunks of filter that must have been blown into the valves and stuff. Fun stuff. A new SAI pump runs about $200 new, and I got a quote for $135 out of a salvage yard. I'll probably buy a new one. So the moral of this story, if you've got a 2000-2003 9-5 V6 and haven't had the filter changed in there for a while, you may want to get on that. Soon.

Welcome to my Saab Blog

I've had enough stuff go wrong with my 2001 Saab 9-5 SE V6 sedan that I figured I should start a blog about the darn thing and share some (hopefully) helpful pictures/experiences with other 9-5 owners. Don't get me wrong, I am not creating this blog to bash the brand. I love Saab and will certainly buy another. Buying mine with 159k miles, I knew it wasn't going to be amazingly reliable, and you can't expect any car to be reliable with those kinds of miles under its hood. My car currently has 178,8xx miles on it and is still running strong, which a few hiccups along the way. Enjoy!