 |
|
|
1985-1998 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup
Sticker guy wouldn't pass my Mom's '96 9000CS, because pictogram showed brake light trouble when you stepped on brakes WITH headlights on, not when headlights off. (Lights worked though, I'm pretty sure.) When I pulled light clusters out here's what I found: Crappy Hella design, to quote one guy who posted on this same topic.
RH brakelight bulb's heat had melted the plastic prongs that hold in place the tin shell that is the light socket. Contact was being made with bulb, but not solid contact.
Design works fine for the other three bulbs but brake's 21 watts makes a lot of heat. Maybe a prior owner drove in mountains a lot, or rode the brakes, or held the brake down while parked waiting for a girlfriend, or fell asleep drunk in his car with foot on pedal, or whatever. (Bulb was not, as some have suggested, reversed in its holder, which I guess could happen but it's hard to see how.)
Made worse since the two-contact base means two sets of springy prongs pushing up against the softened plastic catches, twice the pressure of all the other sockets.
So, sockets use a crimp-type notch in their tin to cut thru the insulation and make contact with the wires from the terminals. They all use a common ground wire, traveling around from crimp to crimp, brake socket first.
At the bad socket, that crimp was loose on the ground wire and I didn't trust it.
For a fix, I released that wire and found a new track for it, careful not to snap it where the crimp had scored it.
Then I soldered a new fat ground wire just for that socket, from a hole I drilled into the ground spade lug's extension, to a dogleg-shaped notch in the edge of the top of the brake light socket.
I drilled two tiny holes, 1/16", one down low on a plastic "buttress"-like rib alongside the plastic socket, another 180 degrees opposite, right thru the outside of the light housing and thru the base of the plastic tower where the crimp extension for the original ground wire stuck down in.
Then I tied the tin socket down into its place, using plastic bread-bag twistems that I burned the plastic off over the sink, like a P-tex candle, to yield two pieces of tough flexible tie wire. Ran it through my two holes, then up and diagonal thru the ports where the plastic spring prongs that melted away were meant to hook.
It worked like a charm, no problem with lights or pictogram now. A lot of nitpicky work but it beats paying big bucks to Saab for new light assemblies. I first visited the boneyard and found two 9000s but each had the same problem, only far worse than my car.
(Another idea I had was to drill two holes out the back of the assembly, and put two skinny bolts through, each with a washer just big enough to catch the outside edge of the light socket's rim and hold it down, nuts on outside of back cover.)
That other guy drilled two similar holes and ran a U of 12-gauge wire in, up alongside tin socket shell, and soldered it to the shell each side.
posted by 72.227.89...
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
