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I live in Philadelphia, and have a 2001 9-5 Aero. Last week, my wife and I decided we couldn't fly to my grandmother's in Southern Illinois due to our daughter's ear problems, so we canceled our air tickets and hit the road. We had heard about an approaching snow storm, and hoped to beat it.
We didn't. It hit full force at about 1:00 a.m. while we were on I-64 West in Indiana. The interstate was bad but passable, and we didn't want to get snowed in, so we kept going, figuring the relatively short drive from the interstate would be manageable. It was, but just barely. I grew up in Connecticut, and I've never driven through snow like that. Many couldn't make it, and the road was littered with stranded cars, pickups, and SUVs. It took about six hours to travel a distance that normally takes about an hour and a half, but we made it to Harrisburg, Illinois intact. The Aero and its Sumitomo HTR+ tires were spectacular.
But the snow was too deep to pull into my grandmother's driveway, so I wanted to look for a plowed lot, and walk. My wife disagreed, and urged that we try the alley behind my gm's house. Against my better judgment, I went for it. The car struggled a little, and I saw a tuft of black smoke come out from under the hood. At the end of the block, right behind my gm's house, the Aero died and wouldn't re-start. I smelled something like burned rubber.
Within half an hour, I had help, and the consensus was that snow had clogged the air intake. A mechanic showed up an hour later, and he agreed. (Assuming this was the problem, I was irritated with my wife for not listening to me, and far more irritated at myself for listening to her. You know the drill.) So we put the Aero in my gm's garage, eventually with a high power propane heater to dry it out. After two days of this, it still wouldn't start, so we towed it to the mechanic's garage.
He eventually determined that the plugs weren't firing, and thought it was a sensor problem. (He had never worked on a Saab before, but has an excellent local reputation.) I called my dealer in Delaware, and the service manager immediately diagnosed it as a DI cassette failure, which, amazingly enough, had nothing to do with the snow.
I walked over to the mechanic's garage, saw the DI cassette removed, and heard him say: "You ready to go to St. Louis?" He had figured it out, and had determined that the nearest Saab dealer was near St. Louis, about 165 miles away. I called that dealer, and they had the part, and told me I also "needed" a "download" to make sure the new DI cassette would function properly and minimize the likelihood of a second failure. This, of course, could only be done at the dealer, and thus required an expensive three hour tow.
I made the trip yesterday, and the service at Manchester Saab (about 15 miles West of downtown St. Louis) was excellent. Knowing I was stranded 900 miles from home, they took me in and performed the work immediately. We drove back to Philadelphia last night and this morning, and the Aero was back to its dominating ways.
But this was a stressful situation, and to me points up several problems, which raise questions:
1. Apparently DI cassette failure is a frequent problem. One tech told me it happens in 1/15 to 1/12 of 9-5's between 50K and 70K. (Mine is in that range.) I've seen posts about it here. That's just an incredible failure rate for such an important part. Has Saab addressed this by, for example, improving later versions of the DI cassette, and why is it such a problem? How likely is it to fail again?
2. In the age of the Internet, it is ridiculous that anyone should have to travel to a dealer for a "download" or for "codes." (I wonder whether this was even necessary.) I should have been able to buy the part, and have it installed locally, thus avoiding the expensive, time consuming tow. (I could have left a day earlier if I hadn't needed the tow.) Any licensed mechanic should be able to access whatever is necessary to make the repairs, perhaps with the customer paying a fee for the download.
3. It's a real hassle to have a Saab break down in rural Southern Illinois, and in some areas I'm sure it would be much worse. The nearest place that even worked on Saabs was 40 miles away, but it didn't have parts and couldn't do the "download." Now that Saab is part of GM, the latter's vast dealer network should be adapted to support Saab owners in remote locales. Has this been done at all?
Of course, we're lucky to have a car that could get us through such a massive snowstorm, and even luckier that the DI didn't fail until we had arrived. But I'm still concerned about the long term viability of the Aero, as it had required a tow for another part failure only a couple of months ago. I still love it, but that new Acura TL looks pretty nice...
posted by 151.199.24...
, Wed, 29 Dec 2004 23:38:10
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