saablog

On Monday I stopped by Europa, because as I was driving by I saw the 900 in the open work bay. The head was on, and Tien expected to have the car finished later in the day. I told him that I was leaving for LA and that I would pick the car up on Wednesday morning.

On Tuesday he phoned and said that the CHECK ENGINE light is on at idle, he diagnosed it as failed Oxygen sensor. Those usually get fouled by the coolant when a head gasket fails. Since I’m accustomed to the intermittent CE light (and since I’ve just passed emission test anyhow) I told him to leave it as is.

I walked over yesterday morning about 8:45 and picked up the car. Total including tax was $1329. Ouch. Time to start putting the miles on the car to earn some of that money back at 50.5 cents per mile. So I drive home, loaded up my test equipment, and headed down to Tumwater for a project… the second-farthest trip I’ve ever taken the 900 on.

It was great to be back in the 900. It sounded better than before (I’d had a lot of valve noise which was fixed when the head was machined and valve stem seals were replaced). The belts were properly tensioned so didn’t make any noise. About halfway there I decided to try the cruise control which has always been inoperative, and IT WORKED. That will make it a bit nicer to use the 900 on longer freeway drives where I tend to creep up in speed.

After my project I got lunch in Olympia near the capital, where I stopped for this nice photo. While I was taking it, the Pontiac Vibe that is parked behind me pulled into that spot and went back-and-forth about 15 times to get crookedly parked in the spot. The heavy-set middle-aged female driver fit my imagined demographic perfectly.

I also put the car seat in the 900 when I got back, to go pick up Luisa. She told me repeatedly that my black car with orange stripe is “cool”. She’s quite an arbiter of good taste, so I take that as quite a compliment.

I’ll be glad to get the 900 on the road again. I renewed the license last week, but haven’t driven it for a long time.

Today I had to run in to Ballard to get wipers for Ani’s car (the non-Saab ones sucked, and I had a coupon for Carter Saab) and on my way home I stopped by Moe’s Automotive SAAB Specialist on NW 85th & 17th, because I saw a bunch of jacked-up classic 900s sitting around the lot. Walking in to the lobby of his shop was like stepping back in time 30 years: cigarette smoke rose up in the air from an overfilled ashtray, and the lobby smelled like that ashtray had been overfilled since long before the new millennium was rung in. The yellowed lighted sign and the worn key-hook board played off worn linoleum and chipped Formica. When Moe walked in from the shop, his greasy coveralls with his embroidered nametag had the patina of time, oil, gas, and smoke. When I asked him for an estimate, he wrote down the year and motor of my car on a paper, turned it over in his hand, and told me (seemingly without referencing anything in particular) that it would be about $850. That’s about HALF the price that Scanwest told me. It’s still more than I actually paid for the car, but half price nonetheless. After a brief discussion of the car’s symptoms, and confirmation that it hadn’t overheated, I told him I’d save up some money and be in touch.

Depending on what I hear from the community colleges, I’m thinking Moe is my man. I’ve got almost that much money saved up from the car’s earnings, and can work on reclaiming the rest of the money by putting more miles on the car throughout the year.

Despite information on SaabCentral, to the contrary, I’m afraid that the head gasket  is the source of BSOS woes. I found the following information on www.thesaabsite.com when searching the FAQs under Engine Smoke:

A problem that will cause your car to smoke or steam after sitting overnight could be a faulty head gasket. A faulty head gasket will allow the cooling system pressure to bleed coolant into the combustion chamber overnight causing the vehicle to blow white smoke and create a sweet smell from the exhaust until the exhaust has become hot enough to burn all of the antifreeze away. The gasket usually blows between Cylinders # 2 and # 3.

The first paragraph very accurately describes what I’ve got. I’ve just called my repair shop and gotten a quote for replacing the HG: $1850 with rebuilt head, $1400 without. The necessary gaskets themselves purchased online are $72.50 plus shipping.

I’m afraid I don’t have the skills to replace the HG myself. It looks like my cherished, fun project car is dead unless I can find some friends or family members willing to help me undertake replacement of the HG.

Friends of BSOS 900, please comment or email me with your thoughts. Thanks.

The sages at Saab Central told me how to check quickly whether the head gasket had failed… pull each spark plug and shine a flash light into the hole to inspect the top of the piston. If coolant is getting in there, the piston will be washed and clean looking. Otherwise it will be dirty like the inside of a motor.

I did that, and all of the pistons were dirty. So what does that tell me? I’ve still got escaping coolant, that SEEMS to be getting out through the exhaust. Check out my videos.

You’ll remember reading that the 900 turned 120,000 miles recently. If you’re really astute (or if you look in the Saablog archive) you’ll recall that this month marks the 2-year anniversary of my purchase of the car. As Washington state requires emission testing bi-annually for vehicles in the metro area, I went today during lunch to have the 900’s emissions checked.

One of the things the testers do is look for the CHECK ENGINE light on the dashboard; if it’s illuminated you immediately fail the test. When the 900 idles for longer than a minute or two, its CHECK ENGINE light tends to illuminate. The lamp goes out when I start driving again. It doesn’t bother me, but I couldn’t risk having it turn on while I idled in line for my emissions test.

All of the “idiot” lamps for the dashboard are accessible through the driver-side speaker opening. When the rear window defroster lamp burned out last year, I replaced it with the cruise control’s lamp since the cruise control is inoperative. I won’t admit to having done anything wrong, and the 900 did pass its $15 emission test. Now I just need to pay the $49.50 and renew the license.

Of course, it doesn’t make sense to license a car that doesn’t work, or that I’m going to have to be rid of. Lately I’ve been having A LOT of smoke on startup, and I burned through the coolant in my coolant reservoir in just 800 miles, so I believe I’m consuming coolant. That likely points to a headgasket failure. Today a heavy white smoke bellowed from the back of the 900 until I was merging on to I-5, so for almost a mile.

I don’t think I have the mechanical aptitude to replace a head gasket. I certainly lack the confidence required to undertake replacing the head gasket. It will cost upwards of $1000 to have a mechanic replace it, and then I’ll still have a failed 2nd gear synchro (though I’m quite good at double-declutching) and will still need new brakes.

I need to sit down with the ledger book and see how much money the 900 has cost me this year. Having a third car is so fun, especially my eye-catching classic 900, which is a car I’ve always wanted to own, and which has practically spawned its own lifestyle brand (Black Saab Orange Stripe). Having gotten the interior up to snuff this autumn makes the car feel (on the inside) like comfortable, well-cared-for car. But I can’t justify spending thousands of dollars to bring it back to life, when it wouldn’t have as much resale value as what I had put in to it. It’s sad because I really like having the car and driving the car.

The 900 has been parked for weeks with its car cover on. I was traveling, and now that I’m back I’ve been busy enough and lazy enough to just leave it covered. No using the 900 means I don’t have new posts for the Saablog.  Luisa took that phot of the car under cover… can you believe it?

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You read last month about my quest, and success, in finding “new” 1992 audio equipment to make the driver’s environment slightly more enjoyable. The new head unit, $24.99 on eBay, slotted right in and fired right up on FM, and it also plays casettes in both directions. The sound quality is poor when the unit and car are cold, but drastically improves when the car is warm. A big bonus is that it came with the 1992 Saab audio equipment users guide, which explains the CD/EQ functionality.

Last week my CD player arrived. For $50 on eBay, I was very excited to try out the unit which had been pulled from a salvaged vehicle and “may or may not work.” On Wednesday I ripped the dash apart to get at the stereo cage, connected everything up, and as expected I saw the word “COdE” appear on the display. I keyed in my code, and COdE was displayed again. And again. And again. Poop.

Quick research on Swedespeed.com and google showed that the CD players have a coin-cell battery soldered to the circuit board inside. That battery is what the CD player uses to remember whether the code has been entered, and it also remembers your custom audio programs that are saved on the electronic EQ. When the battery ages, its fluid can leak out, leaving the battery dead and the player possibly damaged. I began pulling mine apart, and discovered some missing screws indicating that somebody had been in there before. I removed the top, then the face, then the CD handler/player mechanism. Finally I saw the battery there on the bottom circuit board.

I went to Radio Shack and got another battery. On friday I removed the old battery, and tried to set the new one in place. Without a soldering iron, that didnt’ really work. I reconnected the CD to the head unit, but the battery didnt’ work. COdE was still displayed. The next step is to either borrow or buy a soldering iron to place the new battery.

In any case, I ran out of time for the repair. I had to travel again this week. With a bunch of wires hanging out of the dash, I can’t comfortably drive it, especially since one of the wires has a light bulb hanging on the end of it (the ash tray lamp when in place), making it distracting to try to drive in the dark. So with the CD player in pieces, I pulled the 900 off to the side of the driveway and put its cover on. It’ll sit there for a few weeks until I’m back in town and can get a soldering iron. Pretty sad, really. The optional stereo upgrade has essentially sidelined the car.  I drove the Volvo to the airport today for the first time in months.

Thanks to the modern marvel known as the camera phone, you can witness blurry photographic evidence of this milestone. If I ever become a professional photographer, the Cingular 2125 won’t be my camera of choice!

The car was getting excited to turn it’s odometer’s second digit from 1 to 2, and was preparing a couple of miles ahead of time:

I wanted to see the car with all of those 9s, but this junky in-motion shot is the only one I got:

Here it is, actually rolling over:

You can guess that the next photo will be of the actual mileage at 120k:

And here is a lovely shot of what I see from the driver’s seat. Enjoy!

I’ll post some time next week when all of my 15 year-old audio equipment arrives and I have the chance to hook it up.