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Hello, I sincerely hope this doesn't fall into one of those 20 times a day annoying type posts, but I did a cursory search and came up with not much.
Yeah, it's a wall of text, I try to be detailed.
I'm currently driving a small 4 cyl pickup truck. It's slow, ugly, has no back seat, has 123,000 miles, gets 17/25mpg, and grinds on fourth gear in an ominous manner- I'd like to get out of it while it's still valued over $4,000. I'll rebuild the tranny if I have to to sell it.
Anyway, finally getting down to business, there are two Saab 9000 Aeros in my area. Both are manual transmissions with the 225 horse motor, Both have tan leather interior.
The first is only 15 minutes or so from my home, and I have planned to test drive it this weekend. It is a 1996, has 178,000 miles on it, and the owner is asking $2,000. He tells me that the clutch and timing chain were replaced by the previous, and original owner at 145,000 miles, but he has no paperwork. I did not think to ask him if he has the regular service records the first time I spoke to him, but I doubt it if he doesn't even have the clutch/chain papers. He pulled the ABS fuse when the dash light came on, (this worries me, I read that the TCS system uses the ABS sensors, and that it can cause BIG problems) and tells me that he was told it needs a wheel sensor, which I don't mind replacing myself. In fact, I plan on doing all repairs myself that can be done with the engine in the vehicle, and maybe even those repairs to if I can get my hands on the right equipment.
Oh, and the car looks damn near immaculate, the paint is still shiny, the carpets are clean, the leather in good shape with only 2 very small worn looking spots on the driver seat. The dashboard looks new. There are high res pics on the craigslist ad, which I will link to if someone will assure me that's not breaking any forum rules.
The second is about an hour's drive away, is a 1997, has 155,000 miles on it, and I have left a message on the owner's voice mail. The ad claims to have service and maintenance records, and that the oil was changed every 5,000-7,000 miles. That worries me too, those are pretty long drain intervals unless synthetic oil was being used. I have not seen high resolution photos of anything, and there isn't even a low res photo of the interior. Asking price: $2700
My research on the internet has led me to believe that 9000's are solidly engineered vehicles that last upwards of 300,000 miles when maintained, (found one guy with nearly half a million) but that need small repairs regularly. I am not opposed to putting money into the $2000 car, or a little money into the $2700 one. There's a part of me that wants to negotiate the 177k car to below $1500, then keep driving my truck while I pull the motor and do a full engine rebuild and suspension overhaul- total cost should still come in under my truck's value, but I'm a college student and that's a whole lot of my time to spend (while mechanically inclined -I'm an engineering student- I have never rebuilt a motor before, and can't find any kits for this one)
tl,dr:
Choice of two high mileage 9000's, one with service records, but possibly not ideal service, and which likely has a very worn interior, one probably with no service record, but very cheap, and with an interior that looks less than 5 years old. How should I go about inspecting them? I was thinking I should take the extra trouble to run a compression test on such high mileage motors?
posted by 72.153.12...
, Sun, 8 Mar 2009 15:00:02
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