1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
The upside of living in the Northeast is that finding a competent SAAB mechanic should not be an issue.
Depending on the car, I don't think that 8-10K is unreasonable. As far as getting stranded, noone can tell what might fail on a 25 year old car. My daily has 265K on it and I would not hesitate taking it anywhere. However, I maintain it myself, have a tool set in the car, and have a pretty good idea of failure trends. Could be something as simple as a charge signal wire falling off the alternator, or something as hard to diagnose on the road as a failing fuel pump or ignition amplifier. I drove an hour once to put a new fuel pump in my son's 1993 900 when he got stranded on the thruway when moving to FL from NY. Fortunately he was only an hour away, and I knew how to replace the pump roadside. He had issues with the car in FL and he was not equipped to deal with it so he traded it in on a new Dodge Challenger SRT8. He's back in NY now, and says he misses the car. Wished he kept it. I wish he did too. It was a Ruby convertible with tan interior and top. 120K mile garage queen. We put a $700 stainless steel performance exhaust, red-box package, SPG springs, short-throw shifter, and Aero wheels on that car. He got $500 for it in trade. I saw it on ebay for $3500. Exactly what we had paid for it 16 months before he moved to FL with it. Can you tell I'm still miffed? :-)
Stupid things fail on these cars which can drive you nuts. Ignition cylinder breaks, hall-effect connector goes bad, headlight adjuster snaps, gauge lights go out, impossible to find vacuum leaks, water leaks, harmonic balancer squeals, shift coupler fails, directional stalk won't stay off... and the steering rack leaks like it was a design feature. When things are good, they're great. When there not, you find out how patient and tolerant of a man you are.
My wife's car is a 1992 900 turbo vert. We picked it up 2+ years ago. It had 60K miles on it. It needed to have the AC repaired/converted, needed a new top, a new fuel-gauge sender, and a few other things. She's in sales and travels all over the northeast with it. Only time she had an issue is when the tailpipe broke on her. I should have been keeping a better eye on that. The intermediate pipe WILL break off from the cat without a warning. Sometimes she feels bad driving an old car while her coworkers all have newer cars, but then some parking lot attendant will chat her up about the SAAB and not give a second look to the other's cars, and she's back to loving it.
posted by 169.226.161...
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