saablog

Last week our family went to Portland; I worked there Wednesday through Friday while Ani and Luisa played, and we visited friends together when I wasn’t working. Because we were staying at a downtown hotel with a very tight parking garage, we took the 9-5, which doesn’t require an entire city block for turning around.

Before we left we’d had the rear sunshade up, because it had been hot. On Wednesday morning it was raining quite heavily, so I lowered the sunshade. When I did that I noticed that the cover of the high-mount stoplight, in top-center of the rear window, was drooping on the passenger side. I tried to quickly shove it back in place, but with no luck.

Last night I finally took it apart to investigate. I discoverd that the clip (which holds the cover in place) has broken off of the lamp assembly on the passenger side. Hmm. This isn’t the first time we’ve had this problem.  Twelve days after buying the car in late Autumn 2001, I was driving the new 9-5 over to Jim’s house to show it off. The day was very stormy… so stormy that Ani didn’t come with me because she didn’t want to go out in such lousy weather. As I was driving behind the cemetery in Portland’s West Hills, the wind blew a tree down out of the cemetery. I saw it falling, slammed on the antilock brakes, and slid right under the falling canopy of the tree. The newly-waxed paint on the 9-5 helped the car slide right under the tree. It broke the passenger fog lamp lens, gouged the hood, dented the roof near the sunroof, and scraped the length of the hood and the trunk lid.  The car lived up to its safety hype.

We had the car fixed at Kuni Saab/BMW’s body shop. I probably wouldn’t recommed it, they did an acceptable (but not exceptional) job. After it was fixed, I noticed that the cover for the high-mount stoplight was sagging. Upon investigation, I saw that the clip was broken. We took it in to be repaired, and they did so in about 1/2 hour. I assumed the part had been replaced. Now I’m not so sure.

Having put together plastic models of cars as a kid (and played crash-up derby with my brother, and repaired the cars and crashed them again), I know what it looks like when somebody uses cyano-acrylate glue to glue plastic, and it breaks.  That is exactly what the broken-off mounting tab looks like. I’m guessing Kuni body shop cheap-ed out and glued the tab, and that it broke in last week’s extreme heat. Bastards. I’ve found the lamp assembly online from www.saabpartspeople.com, for $40.80. I’m going to order it so that the car is finally fixed right.

I need part 1 in the diagram above. Too bad I haven’t had a charged-up camera and the 9-5 in daylight together so I could take a picture of the actual problem…

Droopy lamp cover not withstanding, the 9-5 did great on our little family get-away. We used our Garmin Nuvi in it several times on the trip, and it did great… with one mis-step on our way home on Sunday. We left Casey and Bryrick’s house outside of St. Helens in a light rain, with HOME entered as our destination. It routed us away from St. Helens, and I presumed it knew some appropriate back roads to get us down to HWY 30. In fact, it did know back roads… including a gravel one.

With our car loaded up with a week’s worth of traveling supplies, and Luisa dozing off in the back seat, we were routed from Gensman Road onto Smith Road, leading down to Columbia City, OR. The last 2 miles of Smith Road before coming into Columbia city are GRAVEL, and are not particularly well maintained. We stopped, checked the map, and saw that the road ran right onto Hwy 30, so we followed it for just over 2 miles down the bumpy gravel. The 9-5 did just fine, but we were a bit skeptical of the Garmin’s route choice.

This Friday we’re off to Whistler, BC, for a 3-day getaway, burning up some of my Hilton HHonors hotel points at Hilton’s Whistler resort. I’ve heard the drive up is AWESOME, so I’d like to take the R, but Ani thinks we should take the 9-5. We’ll see. 

You probably won’t believe it. For the first time all year, I went to an Autocross practice on Saturday.

 On Friday evening, Ani and Luisa helped me put the cob-webbed Azenis competetion tires on the 900. Luisa practiced using the wrench on the rear quarterpanel of the 900. “Don’t bang the wrench against the car, sweetie!” At least it wasn’t the R.

On Saturday morning, I headed off to practice. The 900 did great. The new shocks really helped the car handle a lot better. There were no scary chassis oscillations during the 2 slaloms like I used to get last year on the worn out OEM shocks.

I set the front tires at 42 PSI, and the rears at 40. I was pulling numbers equivalent to an ‘04-’05 Honda Civic SI hatch, and equivalent a modified ‘06 Mustang (the cars I was able to consistently see run that were not AWD turbos), so I felt pretty good. For the first 3 runs I dropped time each time.

The limiting factor was definately traction. I just kept spinning my tires on accelleration and through turns, which I guess I was taking too fast.  I thought that perhaps I had too much air in the tires, and that they were too hard to get traction. So for the 4th run I lowered the pressure to 40 PSI all around. That didn’t help. It only decreased my traction, causing me to add time on my 4th run.

On my 5th run, I followed a suggestion to enter a slalom on the left instead of the right. That wasn’t helpful, and my final run had the worst time of the day, compounded by seemingly the worst traction of the day.

I had a great time. I need more practice so that I can learn what tire pressures work best. I also think that I’ll be needing to do brakes sooner rather than later. Trying to slow down in a big hurry, the 900’s brakes don’t inspire confidence.