saablog

The 900 and I have returned from a successful journey to Portland. It was pretty much a fly in, fly out type of trip. The blender I was testing overflowed on its first three minute cycle, flooding the motor and wetting live parts. So I didn't have to stay long in Portland.

I left the office just before 4:00 PM yesterday, expecting to hit traffic getting out of Portland. I didn't. After the metered onramp to Hwy 26 at Murray Road, I didn't stop again until reaching Shoreline. From Intertek's door to mine took exactly 3 hours, with 2:58 of those in motion and 2 minutes at stop lights and the metered ramp.

When I first got the 900, it was my friend Dave Newell who suggested I start a blog to keep people informed about every small detail of news about my race car. Dave explicitly told me to make a post about the first time I got the car to 100 MPH. I told him not to worry, that it isn't a 100 MPH type of car. My apoligies to Dave for misleading him.



That's a pretty damn good picture from my partiacular camera phone, and it gives a lot of good information. You can see that it is about 5 minutes past 5:00 PM, that I've gone 82 miles since resetting my trip odometer at the last fill-up, and that I'm in 4th gear nearing red line (I used 4th gear to gain the speed as I was climbing a hill). My only regret is that I was not coordinated enough to have kept my foot in it for the nearly one-second delay between pressing the "capture" button on the phone and the time the shutter captured the photo.

The photo doesn't show that I'm driving up the hill on I-5 NB, approaching the second Northbound rest-area after the Oregon/Washington boarder. The road there is three lanes wide, and offers nowhere for the WSP to hide, provided you can remember to slow down before cresting the hill. There are few places on I-5 where I'm comfortable exceeding the speed limit by that margin; I've just seen them too many places. In fact, in the Chehalis 60 MPH zone the Acura TL behind me did get stopped for speeding, though I was afraid it might have been me the trooper was after, as I'd crept up to about 65 MPH. Fortunately (both for me and for the TL) the trooper was about a mile north of the END CONSTRUCTION sign. 

The one caveat to the photo is that the speedo in the 900 is a bit optimistic at higher speeds. After seeing the needle approach 105 just an instant before snapping the above photo, I was convinced I'd topped the century mark. However, a later check on the Garmin showed my maximum speed for the trip as 92.9 MPH. Hmm. That's a pretty big margin of error. Like about 10 percent.

In any case, I'll be sending Dave an email to be sure he checks out the Saablog. The photo above is specifically for him.

The "Ten Thousand" in the post title is in reference to the fact that I've now driven the car 10,000 miles since buying it in January, 2006. The 900 had just 110,991 miles on it when I purchased it, and on the way to Portland on Monday evening I rolled past 120,991 and on past 121,000.

With the improvements I've made, the 900 just keeps getting better and better. I had a comfortable, pleasant, and FAST trip to Portland and home. When I got home, Ani remarked that the 900 seems to make the trip more quickly than the R. Part of that has to do with the fact that I usually hit traffic between Shoreline and Beaverton, which didn't happen this week. Another part is that I use the cruise control in the R to make sure I don't speed, but the 900's cruise control is inoperative, so my right Puma is the only speed control. In any case, it was a quick trip!

On Saturday I finally got the oxygen sensor loose by using a big wrench of my Papa's. The large 7/8 and 13/16 combo is inscribed with "C. Agren" and is really long. I threaded the wires of the oxygen sensor through the 7/8 hole and lowered the wrench onto the sensor, by working from beneath the car. Then I turned my body around so my legs were under the car, and I pushed on the wrench with my legs. The sensor loosened.

After removing the sensor, I set to work installing the new one. I had to splice on the original Saab connnector (since I had purchased a generic sensor), then I put on anti-seize compound and installed the sensor. The next step (which happened on Sunday) was to take the car for a test drive. The repair manual stated that it might take up to 10 minutes of driving with the vehicle warmed up to clear the Check Engine fault. It did take a full 10 minutes, but the light did go out and hasn't re-appeared.

I ended up needing to come to Portland this afternoon to do some testing in our lab. I would have taken the Volvo, but I had to take in to the shop this morning for a failed power steering reservoir (it was leaking fluid from a seam in the reservoir) which caused loud power steering noise when turning and also caused a half-dollar size circle of fluid to appear on my garage floor. I dropped it off today and also asked my SM to look into why I'm having a difficult time engaging reverse... he said there is a Tech Note about that problem, which requires removing the transmission to re-lubricate some internal parts (which should be permanently lubricated). Hmm. I wonder how long the R will be out?

In any case, in lieu of renting a car Ani suggested that I take the 900. Having just spent a bunch of money on the car, it needs to earn some money back, and since it has just recently been repaired and gotten a new sensor, it shoudl be good to go. So I packed the 900 FULL this afternoon with my sample, test equipment, and some miscellaneous stuff needing to be returned to the office. I left home around 3:15, and made it (on a non-stop drive) in 2 hrs 55 mins to the Joy Wok restaurant near Jim and Brenda's house. Pretty good timing from the North End. The 900 performed flawlessly, though the cruise control is again AWOL and there were some pretty brisk winds which attempted to push me off course. Hopefully I'll be returning (swiftly) home tomorrow.

So you all know I'm a little bit fanatic about Saabs. I'm also pretty fanatic about Luisa. So when she learned to spell SAAB last weekend when she was helping me wash the car I was really excited... Watch this!

The Check Engine lamp is on pretty much full-time now.  It makes me crazy.

I checked eeuroparts.com, and the OEM sensor is $140. Then I checked saabpartspeople.com, and they wanted $240. Then I checked my local auto parts store, who had a sensor for $66. I bought that one.

So today I went out to remove the sensor. I can't get it out. I even jacked up the car and took off the wheel so I could get under the car to get better grip on the wrench. No dice. The nice folks on saabcentral say the exhaust should be hot which will release some of the tension on the fitting. But I'm afraid I'd burn myself that way.  I'm sure I'll figure it out somehow but it is pretty frustrating nonetheless