saablog

Last week Ani told me that the tires on the 9-5 were sliding a lot on the wet streets of her daily commute and asked me to look at them. What I saw when I looked was that the Toyo Proxes TPTs, which we bought from Uncle Les (Les Schwab) in Portland when we lived there didn't have very much tread left at all. Standing water not too deep would surely overwhelm the shallow tread. It was time for new tires.

Over the course of owning these tires, I had decided that I wasn't going to buy tires any more from Les Schwab. Their facilities near our house aren't very nice, and they don't seem to carry very many of the most popular tire brands. I'd had great service from Discount Tire in Lynnwood when I bought my Michelin Pilot Spot All Season tires for the R, and also when I bought the Falken Azenis tires for the 900.

I love the Michelin Pilot Sport A/S I'm running on the Volvo, and originally wanted to get a set of those for the 9-5. But they were pretty much the most expensive tires available for the car in my research, and we don't drive the 9-5 nearly as hard as the R, so it just doesn't make sense to spend that kind of money (~$190/tire) for the car that we don't use as a performance vehicle. I did a bunch of research on Saab Central, Swedespeed, the Tire Rack web site and on Discount Tire's web site, and had made a few determinations:

0)         I hate Pirelli tires and I'm not getting any Pirellis no matter what anybody recommends.

1)         The Pilot Sport A/S is too expensive ($161 at Tire Rack, $184 at Discount)

2)         Michelin Pilot Sport Exalto is cheaper and well rated ($128 @TR, $141 @Discount)

3)        Nokian WRG is too expensive, and doesn't have crisp handling in dry conditions (~$160/tire, only available at Tire Factory which is in Everett or Kirkland)

4)         Goodyear Response Edge is very well rated and fairly inexpensive ($109 @TR, $129 @Discount)

5)         Goodyear Eagle F1 is loved by its owners on Saab Central but not well rated on Tire Rack

6)         Bridgestone Potenza RE960A/S is well rated on Tire Rack, but nobody on Saab Central nor Swedespeed had anything good to say about Bridgestone tires. ($122@TR, $145 @Discount)

7)         Continental ContiSport tires have a love/hate reaction, and I saw enough "hate" reactions that I didn't want them.

8)         I'm not as concerned about how many miles I'll get out of the tire as I am about how the tires will perform, and what the driving experience will be like.

I bounced it off of Ani, since it's her car, and she said to choose NOT the cheapest, but the 2^nd cheapest on my list, as she correctly assumed that the tires on my list had already been researched and therefore deemed good enough to be on the list.

So are you following? Can you tell which tires I wanted and which ones I bought?

Umm, me neither. I decided to go the Discount Tire which was opened within the past year here in Shoreline, to look at the tires and see which of the above tires the store would recommend. I pretty much figured I'd get the Pilot Exaltos, but was open to being swayed by the "experts" at the store.

When I got there, a guy named Barney helped me. I showed him my list of tires, which had Discount's prices and Tire Rack's prices on it. He showed me the Pilot Exalto, and the Response Edge. He said that he wouldn't really recommend the Response Edge, because they've had a lot of them come back out of round. He then showed me a "better rated" Goodyear tire, the Assurance TripleTread. It is the exact same price as the Michelin Pilot Exalto. I was unsure of the tire, as I hadn't come across it in any of my research. Barney explained that the tire had great wet and slush performance, and told me that if it didn't' meet my satisfaction I could exchange it under their 30 day satisfaction guarantee. He said it has a longer life than the Pilot Exalto and that everybody he's sold that tire to has been happy with it. I haltingly agreed, and 45 minutes later the car was... ready.

Ready is with one exception. When they were mounting the four tires, one of them turned out to be bad, as in faulty from the manufacturer so it couldn't be mounted properly. So they put back on one of the old tires, and told me to return the next day.

On the 2 mile drive home on city streets, I already knew that I'd been had. The Goodyear Assurance TripleTreads suck. Steering feel is very light, and on-center feel is so light as to be nonexistent. Taking off from a stop on dry pavement with any vigor results in wheel-spin. Taking corners with any speed results in understeer, breaking traction on the front tires and summoning the TCS (Traction Control System), indicated by a blinking reminder in the instrument panel.

I called the store as soon as I got home, telling them not to bother with the fourth Goodyear tire, as I already knew I wanted the Pilot Exaltos. Barney told me to at least get the fourth tire on, and to try it out over the weekend since the exchange policy is for 30 days and I was barely 30 minutes in. OK.

I started doing research on this inferior tire. Turns out it's pretty highly rated for a standard All Season tire, but that's it. When I searched on recommended tires for the 9-5, the Goodyear Assurance TripleTread never came up because it's only a standard All Season tire, not a Touring, Grand Touring, High Performance, or Ultra High Performance All Season. Saab specifies Grand Touring grade as a minimum grade replacement tire, so Barney managed to recommend (and sell me) a tire that doesn't meet Saab's minimum specifications.

Discount Tire and Tire Rack both sell the Assurance Triple Tread, and people love it. Those people have them installed on Honda Civics, Chrysler Voyager minivans, and Toyota Camrys. They say the tire totally transformed the car. I would believe it, because cheap cars come from the factory with cheap tires, so these expensive tires would be an improvement. However, on my European sport sedan, they're woefully inadequate.

Over the weekend we drove the 9-5 to Anacortes and back, to visit Ani's mom on Lopez Island. The lack of on-center feel, and the perceived "lift" of the tires at high-speed was unnerving. At 85 MPH I want the car to feel solidly connected to the road, rather than feel like it's driving on tires that are 2-sizes narrower than intended.

I will be replacing with Pilot Exaltos later this week. I'll report on the exchange experience.

This morning I had a new search message from eBay, detailing all of the new items for sale at eBay motors under Saab and Audio. The message had arrived over the weekend but I didn't see it until this morning. One of the items was an OEM head unit from a 1992 Saab 900s, with removal tools, audio manual, and radio code. Pretty much exactly what I'm looking for.

In any case, when I read the message I discovered that there were only about 30 minutes remaining on the auction, and also that no bids had been made. Acting on the info I gleaned from my friend and fellow eBay newbie Amy, I waited until there was less than 1 minute in the auction, and entered the maximum amount I would be wililng to pay, which was $56.78 (non-even numbers per Amy's info). I remained the only bidder, and picked up the radio for its opening bid of $24.95. I"m thrilled. I'll keep you posted on how/whether it works.

I took the 900 on my trip to Portland this week, where we stayed at the Embassy Suites Portland Airport because I was working out on NE Sandy Boulevard at 200th. The drive down was fine, though I did end up topping off the coolant upon arrival as it was right at the LOW mark on the bottle.

On Monday after work, the 900 took me to West Linn where I visited the Katkos. It climbed the big hill up Pimlico without incident. On Tuesday after work, I ventured the mile to Portland's new IKEA store, where I had dinner with the Vogeltanzes. Ava liked climbing in the back seat just like Luisa does. Brenda and Jim thought I'd done a great job on the interior, though a huge squall was blowing through the parking lot as they were trying to look, so there wasn't a lot of time to linger.

On Wednesday morning, I fought traffic through a thunderstorm to the Intertek office in Beaverton, where my manager and Intertek's Cheif Electrical Engineer (himself an 80s/90s Jeep project car guy) checked out the car and complimented the interior as well as the "backwards" hood opening and engine orientation.

After a dinner Wednesday evening with our friend Lynn (who describes herself as an "operator" of her dented Altima rather than a driver), I loaded up the 900 and we headed out through a dark, rainy night toward home. In the first 50 miles of the trip I encountered plenty of showers (including one very heavy one) and standing water, which the car and its oldie-but-goodie Kumho Excsta tires handled very well. The remainder of the trip had just scattered light showers.

I filled up on the way home, 14 miles in to Washington and 340 miles into my trip. I calculated my fuel economy for that fill-up to be 26.74 MPG, not bad for the car being fully loaded with test equipment, driving in some heavy rain, and fighting traffic across town and back in Portland on Wednesday.

The car performed flawlessly on the trip, although the Black SAAB/ORANGE Stripe stickers I applied didn't have strong enough adhesive to stay on the car, so I'll have to tape them on next time. Also I discovered that there isn't quite enough left-leg room to keep my leg comfortable on such long trips.

This morning I moved the car into the garage to unload it, and one of the headlamp bulbs burned out. Fortunately they were both working last night. I'm glad I did the trip to Portland in the 900, though I might not repeat it anytime soon...

On Friday afternoon I finished stitching the metal upholstery rods to the bottom of the driver's seat upholstery, and also reinstalled the upholstery onto the seat. That involved pliers, clips, pulling, and scraped knuckles. I eventually got the seat together and both of the seats installed.

Here is the upholstery with the wire stitched on. Green circles are where the clips go through the cushion (see below). The red circles are where clips attach to the bottom of the seat after the upholstery has been pulled over the rear of the seat-bottom cushion. The orange circles are where the perimeter upholstery-support wire is secured to the bottom-front of the seat.

Here are the locations where the clips (below) pass through the seat cushion to attach to the web under the seat bottom.

These are the clips that are used for the above upholstery attachment.

The finished product, before I trimmed the zip-ties attached at the orange circle location from the first photo. 

 On Friday evening I finally was able to recover the sunroof headliner with new material. I ended up using the existing front and rear mounting strips, though I reversed them as the rear strip was in better shape. I used double-sided tape to affix the material to the strips, and additionally I stitched the rear strip in several locations, while the front strip relies on the four screws that hold the sunroof assembly together.

On Saturday I reinstalled the sunroof and was done. It was quite a challenge for me to get the sunroof parts back in, especially attaching the outer panel to the inner panel.  Unfortunately I don't have photos of the headliner with me, so I'll have to post those later. In any case, the project is complete and I"m pretty happy with how it turned out.

By the way... the 900 made it to Portland without incident. I'm having fun with it.