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Hi, Folks,
I've been reading the Saab top stories on this site for years before deciding to get mine fixed recently. But I've encountered a problem I've not yet seen here. Any advice is appreciated before I throw more good money after bad.
A few months ago, I decided to sell my 95 900se after driving it for 3 years with a dead tonneau motor. A friend of a friend who was interested in the car took it to the nearest dealership (Saab of Norman, Ok) and got an estimate of $3100 to fix the top. I knew it could be fixed a lot cheaper independently, but the buyer passed.
So, I decided to fix the top independently before trying to sell it publicly. I found a tonneau motor on eBay for $350, had it installed by my indy Saab mechanic in Edmond, OK and he had it calibrated and programmed by the Saab dealership in Edmond (note, a different Saab dealership from the one that diagnosed the problem for the potential buyer). My indy mechanic doesn't have the computer equipment to calibrate the top and he told me that this dealership has a mechanic who has specifically received Saab training in programming these tops. Grand total, about a grand.
I put the car up for sale and showed off the newly working top to prospective buyers, probably opening and closing it without problems about 6-8 times. I let some friends who showed interest in the car test drive it for a couple of days. They loved it and made an offer. But they had a problem. They couldn't get the top to close properly one evening. The rear window section wouldn't latch down into the tonneau. Not knowing what to do, they pulled the manual release, then reset it, and the top closed properly. However, the next time they tried to open the top, it failed. The tonneau would open and rear window would go up about halfway, the came the "check soft top" error and it would stop.
I thought the problem might be that they pulled the manual release, as the owner's manual says that it must be re-set by the dealership after doing so. So, I made an appointment with the Saab Norman, the dealership nearest me, to have the manual release re-set. They said over the phone that it should take about 30 minutes and cost about $45. Great! But when I took it in they said that they couldn't figure out why it wouldn't work without getting into several hours of diagnostics and programming which would cost $400-$500 dollars. I reminded them that I just had all of this done at Saab Edmond a couple of weeks earlier. At this point they mentioned to me that they had seen this car before (when the friend of a friend brought it in for diagnosis, prior to any repairs) and they had determined it had a bad tonneau motor and that the "top module" was bad. Hmm ... this is the first I had heard about a bad top module. Saab Edmond didn't mention this and it had been working fine for a while after they calibrated it.
So, I decided to take it back to Saab Edmond. I simply told them that they top they had recently programmed not longer working. They took it in for diagnosis and guess what they found? Bad top module! Cost to repair: $1600, including $1200 for the part. They said this must have gone bad since the previous repair. I was dubious.
I consulted with my indy mechanic, who said if I could find a salvaged top module, he would install it and then we would have to send it back over to Saab Edmond for reprogramming. Okay. I found a top module on eBay for $99. It arrived yesterday and I'm waiting for an appointment with my indy mechanic to put it in, then probably another $400 at Saab Edmond to re-program. Then, this morning I read a post reply from Anders that says he's never seen an NG900 convertible that didn't have the bad top module error!
Now thoroughly confused, I'm afraid to have the new top module installed and re-programmed for fear that this isn't even the problem! I trust my indy Saab mechanic thoroughly, but he doesn't have the diagnostic/programming tools, and I have little confidence in either Saab dealership now.
I really don't know what to do, but I know I need to get this thing fixed right so that they folks who want to buy it can give me a check!
Does anyone have any thoughts about what might be going on here?
Thanks,
Darrin
posted by 68.97.10...
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