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, Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:07:51
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03, 9-5 Aero SW, ~44K now, but the problem has been there for a while.
History:
Tires were rotated at ~32K and were fine. At ~37K, right rear blew out. Both rears were finished so I got two new tires up front and rotated the fronts back. I mentioned this to a dealer at just under 40K. They thought it was simply an alignment issue, but did not have time to check it and I couldn’t wait another day while I was traveling. The tires were already ruined by 40K anyway. Got back home and went to my local dealer. Dumb techs told me I needed rear tires rather than finding a root cause (I told the service writer the tires were shot). I went back to the service manager who on my suggestion checked the alignment. Rear camber specs were -2.1L and -2.8R unloaded. (The front right was giving weird numbers too, but with the rear so far out, the other numbers cannot be trusted.) When the car is loaded, the alignment looks and is much worse (I don’t have numbers).
The wear is not on the inner treadface, but where the sidewall meets the treadface. Whatever has worn out / failed prematurely due to defect or under-sizing has caused the alignment to get excessively out of spec and therefore worn the tires at the edge.
Now:
The dealer is replacing the rear springs and shocks since the alignment was so far out of spec that even shim plates will not help. There is no obvious failure of any component. This was all the dealer could think to do. I think it may need shims too, but I can’t know until the suspension is fixed. I think going to the load leveling suspension might be a good idea since the ride height directly affects the negative camber (per a discussion with a Hunter technical rep). Nick at Taliaferro also recommended the load leveling since I am having ride height issues.
I have no scientific proof, but I think even a new 9-5 wagon cannot not be loaded to its GVWR stated on the door jamb without the rear tires being destroyed over a few thousand miles. The standard rear suspension should have been load leveling and/or heavier duty, particularly on the wagons. I have told this to SaabUSA, but it is like talking to the wall. SaabUSA has no technical people to be found anywhere (even the dealership service manager complained to me about this saying he gets better help from Volvo) and you can’t expect a customer service rep (who isn’t even a Saab employee) to care or be able to know about technical matters. SaabUSA says the dealers know, the dealers say they don’t know and Saab will not help them, and SaabUSA assumes that all customers are absolute idiots and that nothing I say could possibly be valid unless a dealer validates it.
posted by 24.189.25...
, Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:07:51, Fri, 14 Oct 2005 19:24:34
, Sat, 15 Oct 2005 11:42:31, Sat, 15 Oct 2005 13:11:03, Sun, 16 Oct 2005 10:33:09
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