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.

The 9-5 will become celebrate its 6th anniversary with us next month on 11/18. That means that the 6 year, 100k mile extended bumper-to-bumper warranty we purchased with the car will expire. A truly chilling thought.

In any case, Ani recently noticed that the passenger seat heater wasn't working, so we decided to take the car in to Scanwest Autosport to have that looked at. WE also asked them to look into the sunroof wind deflector, which occasionally doesn't pop up, and occasionally doesn't retract, causing the sunroof to jam while closing. Yikes.

I had just had the 9-5 in to Scanwest the previous week for an oil change. This time I knew it would take all day, so I left them the 9-5 and drove away in an almost-as-cool 1990 900 base-automatic sedan, which was also black, though with cushy velour upholstery.

In any case, after a couple of hours I got a call from Scanwest telling me that the seat heater's plug had been dislodged by moving the seat over an obstruction, probably Luisa's junk under the seat. One half hour of labor, not covered by the warranty because it was mis-use. The sunroof deflector is a known problem, and the fix-kit with labor to install is about $500. The warranty paid $502, leaving us with the seat repair labor plus all of the sales tax, so about $140.

Sadly, in a month the warranty will expire. A few expensive future failures remain, namely the air-blend door failure (about $800) and the security system ECU failure (about $400). I can probably fix the SS-ECU for about $30 plus 2 hours of time, but the air blend door not so much. Oh well.

It's about time to plunge into the unknown world of owning the 9-5 off warranty. THe warranty has certainly paid for itself over the past 2 years since expiration of the factory bumper-to-bumper warranty, with replacement of an A/C compressor, a wheel bearing, and this sunroof deflector.  Time will tell how expensive it becomes. However, one would imagine it will be somewhat less expensive than buying a new 9-5 at a cost of over $30,000. At least I hope so.

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. 

 

We bought our 2001 9-5 2.3lpt 5MT in late November, 2001; using 0% interest for 60 months in GM's "Keep America Rolling" promotion. That's when we offically became a two-black-Saab family for the first time. Since the interest was 0%, there was no reason to pay the car off early.

On Friday I contacted Saab Financial Services to make the final payment, as they wouldn't automatically deduct it from our account. Awesome! Now we can begin allocating that money for more fun stuff... like upgrades!

In any case, I washed the 9-5 on Saturday to celebrate it's 5th birthday and our official ownership. The water I sprayed froze on the driveway later that afternoon, leaving a nice sheet of ice that persisted through Sunday morning!





After 5 years I still think the 9-5 looks sharp, and we still are enjoying it. Enjoy the photos and have a great day!



A nice little family shot... btw, I didn't find any squirrels nesting in the 900. False alarm, thankfully!

I've barely driven the 900 lately. One trip to Sultan last Tuesday, and two to the Home Depot on Wednesday where each time it toted home more than 800 lbs of sand or concrete pavers.  That wasn't the best.

I haven't been doing any work on the 900 either.  That's because our other Saab has been taking up a lot of my time. Our 2001 Saab 9-5 Sedan, which we purchased new in November of 2001, has been having some issues I've been dealing with.

 Several weeks ago, we got a Front Lamp Failure message on the SID (Saab Info Display). I bought a new $15 H7 headlamp, and that didn't fix it. I figured the new bulb was faulty, and spent another $15 on another H7, and still the problem persisted. So I looked on the Saab Network bulletin boards for 9-5 Headlight problems, and found out that a small orange ECU in the underhood relay panel, meant to monitor headlamp functionality, will commonly fail and cause the headlamps to not work. It's a $160 part. So I phoned Scanwest, who had one in stock. Our extended warranty covered the part plus 30 mins of "book time" to replace it, so now that is fixed.

 While we were sorting out that problem, Ani got a rock ding in the windshield on her way to Northgate, on I-5. Every rock ding she has gotten in that car has been on I-5 southbound between home and Northgate (that may be a small exaggeration, but 3 dings have happened to the 9-5 there). We had another one just in May. This one is big enough that it may require replacement of the windshield, but I've called to try to get it filled. Filling dings is free through our insurance company (Allstate), but is a hassle. I finally callled them yesterday, remembering the hassle I went through in May of a long time on the phone, the repaiman standing me up TWICE, and finally a second, thouroughly spooky repairman in his late-'80s Oldsmobile that leaked oil all over our driveway. I've got Harman Glass/Glass Doctor schedule to be her "sometime" on Monday. I ws on the phone with Allstate and then their glass service scheduler (and also the glass shop) for 25 minutes yesterday to schedule it; being transferred 3 times  between departments to do so. Now I get to wait around all day for them on Monday. I love it.

In the midst of these little issues, the 9-5 has also developed a rotational noise that is vehicle-speed dependent. It seems to be coming from the front, and I've eliminated the possibility of a tire problem by rotating the tires myself, and then having them re-balanced yesterday at Les Schwab where they were purchased. The noise persists. I looked on Swedespeed, where the troubleshooting for such a noise recommends checking (1) tires, including pressure; (2) wheels, for straightness and balance; and (3) wheel bearing failure, which is not uncommon on 9-5s around 60k miles, Ours currently has about 55k on it.

I called Scanwest yesterday and made an appointment for a day when I'll be in town to investigate possible wheel bearing failure; that happens to be Monday 14 August. No Ani has just called me from I-5 to tell me that something that "sounds like gravel hitting the underside of the car in the driver-side from wheel-arch" is occurring at freeway speeds. I'm sure the lifting technique at Les Schwab has caused damage to the fragile rocker panel molding pieces or perhaps a mud flap or wheel-arch liner. Awesome.  At least the extended warranty should cover the bearing, it's a bumper-to-bumper warranty in effect until 100k miles or 11/21/07. Looks like we won't reach the mileage limit before next November.

 On a positive note, I'm going to ProFormance driving school (a Barrier Motors sponsored event) on Tuesday in the R. I'm contemplating mixing some 100 octane race gas with the 92 from the pump (half-and-half) to get the best performance from the R; but that fuel seems to be available only in Auburn. Perhaps we can get some tomorrow on the way to/from a BBQ in Puyallup. We'll see.