The Saab Chronicles Part 3
Now that I have lived with the new winter ride—a 1990 Saab 900—for a few weeks, the list of things “gone wrong” in JD Powers parlance has grown quite a bit. None of the items on the list are catastrophic, but they do highlight the perils of buying a 16 year old car.
Typical of Saabs of the era, the headliner was sagging from day one, and I new that from the description provided in the eBay ad. I also new from the description that there is some rust on the front fenders, parts of the car have been repainted, and the SRS (airbag) light blinks. Speaking with the sellers after I bought the little gem I found out that the rear lights “act funky”—which indeed they did when I picked the car up.
On my drive home I noticed the typical 16 year old suspension swagger, a condition brought about by old, worn out bushings, joints, springs and shocks. Despite this looseness the car tracks straight, with the steering wheel cocked just a bit, and does not pull to one side or the other. It actually feels like a magic carpet on the highway compared to my 2003 BMW M3. Overall, my impression after the 700 mile ride home was of a car that was taken good car of until it was donated. As I’ve noted in an earlier installment of The Saab Chronicles, it was a one owner car until it landed on the used car lot via a donation to the Volunteers of America.
The “to do” list of repairs so far is as follows:
Windshield washer pump not pumping
Some dash lights don’t work, others are just plain dim
Exhaust systems leaks
Springs and shocks are worn
Suspensions bushings and joints worn
No interior lights
Headliner sagging
Taillights acting funny
CV joint boots split
Rust on fenders and trunk floor
Cold start issues
Now to a sane person that list in long enough to merit dumping the car and moving on, but not to a person who feels all cars deserve reclamation, especially funky old Swedish cars that were actually great sports sedans in their day.
Thinking of safety, the first thing a tackled were the taillights, which as it turned out was an easy fix. If you ever encounter electrical problems, especially on older non-computerized car components, nine out ten times it’s a bad ground circuit. Sure enough the ground wires on both taillight clusters were burned up. A little wire and some soldering work fixed that.
The next item I tackled, simply because it was so damn annoying, was the sagging headliner. The headliner material is usually attached to a headliner shell. What happened in this Saab’s case was the foam backing on the headliner material disintegrated, causing the material to come loose of its shell. This was an easy repair which just took a little time and patience to complete. I removed all the interior trim that was attached to the headliner, removed the entire shell out through the trunk (the back seat folds down opening up a big pass through). I had to first scrape off the foam backing residue left on the shell before I could re-mount the new material which I bought from the local PepBoys parts store.
I replaced part of the exhaust (the part that was obviously bad) only to find out that the muffler is leaking also. A new muffler is on order. While I was replacing the tail section of the exhaust, I noticed quite a bit of rust between it and the trunk floor and took the time to clean that up. I chipped all the loose, corroded material away, sprayed it with special rust inhibiting paint, patched the holes with metal tape and then painted the underside with rubberized undercoating. These simple steps will help to arrest the underbody rust for another few years.
I’ll tackle some of the other problems in my next installment, and hopefully I’ll remember to take some photos along the way so that you’ll have more than just my idle words to look at.