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Search this bulletin board under pinion gear; it's said they have a way of breaking at high miles; it appears to mean you need a new tranny if so.
But even low-miles clutch disks have been known to come apart, if not of best quality. Typically once it's happened you hear a little jingling and clinking from clutch vicinity as broken pieces fly past each other while the motor's running. You can pry off the clutch shaft end cover (see townsendimports web site, SaabMaster, technical documents, under clutch replacement for how to) and, rolling (stopped, motor not running) car back and forth on level ground, with shifter engaged in some forward gear or reverse, you should be able to see the white plastic cross-shaped oil slinger turning if tranny is good but clutch is bad. Conversely, with motor running and car in gear, if no drive to tranny but that slinger is turning (FAST), tranny would appear to be bad.
Another possibility, very likely if there's absolutely NO shifter feel when you move the gear shift: Tranny might be fine but the taper pin that connects the shift linkage rod to the shift rod entering the tranny might have come out, at the same time as the tranny popped into neutral. (Were you changing gears when it all began?) You can see this area just behind the transaxle from below.
The did-roll-but-won't-roll-now, doesn't-seem-in-neutral comments might in fact indicate that it is the shifter linkage pin that is your problem, and if the local guy who said it needs a tranny LOOKED at it to make his determination, maybe he also grabbed the shifter shaft into the tranny and engaged a gear, or maybe in its transitting to where it now sits it got knocked into gear or moved just the little bit it needed to pop back into gear.
That pin is a ridiculously cheap and easy solution, could even probably put in a bit of bent coathanger to get it in to a garage.
I'm ignoring your can't-start-it-now comments as bizarre coincidence from maybe a pre-existing hard-starting situation, plus your shaken confidence, or maybe if the local guy is one of the occasional unscrupulous tranny shop types, he might have slyly disabled the motor to keep you as his customer.
If it truly is a bad tranny, maybe you could swap the car to an indy Saab garage for another similar (maybe non-Turbo) good runner, paying them something but less than the cost of a new tranny for yours.
posted by 70.16.108...
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