'89 SAAB 9000 Turbo. You know, for working on.

["running!"]

Hey, it doesn’t look like I’ve made a thread for this project yet, probably out of embarrassment, but here goes.

This is my 1989 SAAB 9000 Turbo. It leaks, it rattles, it wheezes, and it’s mine.



I bought it from a guy in Arlington after hunting for a first generation 9000 Turbo for a year. I saw it on the saabnet classifieds in the JMU geolab on a Thursday and drove up in my roommate’s car and bought it on Saturday. Minimal rust (in the important places), crazy low miles (for it’s age), manual (we’ll get to that in a minute), and a three inch stack of receipts for every single repair.

The owner sold it to me for a song because he wanted it to go to someone who would care for it, as his kids didn’t want it and his wife wanted it gone.

So far, I haven’t done that much work on it besides the essentials (plugs, oil, belts). The starter went after a week of owning it, but that was no big deal. The car operated like a dream for a precious couple months.

Then disaster struck. I was parallel parking and as soon as I finished parking, I couldn’t find my clutch pedal. Air in the clutch. After it sat for awhile out front of my house, I tried fruitlessly to bleed the clutch, with MM members before the car show, but the slave was gone.

SAAB geniusly put the slave cylinder on a rod in the transmission. To change the slave requires dropping the subframe, engine, transmission, then conducting open heart surgery on the transmission.



This job was way above my paygrade, as I didn’t even have a cover to work under let alone an engine hoist, so I handed it over to Neil Maddox of Foreign Car Service in Harrisonburg.

Eventually, I got it back (fixed far cheaper than he or I expected and than any other foreign auto place quoted me) and once again, it drove great. I enjoyed working on the little things again, changing the radio, oil, spark plugs, simple things.

Lightning strikes twice and I’m stranded again. But this time, I can’t find any fluid leaking off the bell housing where the slave is (telltale sign of leaky slave) so instead I buy a Genuine SAAB master clutch/brake cylinder. The knock-offs are known to be unreliable so I go for the name brand.

Brandon Bowe and I change it in two hours or so. I drive around victoriously for a week or so until...



Sure enough, stranded again. I ask Neil to look at it. He figures it has to be the master as ‘new’ old stock. The part was built years ago and the clutch fluid eats through the old interior parts and air bubbles form.

I accept this as the diagnosis and send for another master from eEuro. Change the master again, and it fails, again.

Tonight, I will be picking one of these masters up from White Post Restorations, where I dropped it off two weeks ago, outside Stephens City and driving up to NoVA. The car is currently at my parents house in Alexandria, since the purchase of my Mazda 3 daily.

Hopefully, I will put the repaired master in and have no problem getting the car back to Harrisonburg next weekend. But I tend to doubt it.

The good news is, I am now a clutch bleeding whizz.

TL;DR SAAB old, SAAB broken, SAAB fixed, SAAB broken, SAAB fixed, SAAB broken, SAAB fixed?

[.RJ]

Neil Maddox of Foreign Car Service in Harrisonburg.

holy shit that guy is still around? is he still crazy AF?

[BLINGMW]

That is a depressing number of times to have a relatively simple hydraulic system fail. You must love this car!

["running!"]

Neil Maddox of Foreign Car Service in Harrisonburg.

holy shit that guy is still around?  is he still crazy AF?

Yeah! He's still around. He's great, but he's hard to track down. He's out of town a lot visiting family and vacation, but when you can catch him he's a great source of knowledge and good sense of humour.

---

That is a depressing number of times to have a relatively simple hydraulic system fail. You must love this car!

I really can't see myself selling it, it's a great project car.

---

That is a depressing number of times to have a relatively simple hydraulic system fail. You must love this car!

I really can't see myself selling it, it's a great project car.

[WRXtranceformed]

I had a good buddy in high school whose parents were from Canada and Amsterdam, and they loved these things. Their family had 3, because not one of them was running well at any given time. They were definitely cool old cars though

[Senor_Taylor]

Fun project! Good write up. I wonder what this car was up to!

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["running!"]

So I spent the day changing the 'new' master that didn't work, with the newly rebuilt master cylinder.



I began, like always, by unplugging the battery and releasing the master from the clutch pedal, simple.

Move on to pumping the brake to relieve excess tension to not blow the slave - check. I usually open the nozzle (13mm) in the transmission just to be safe. (As I understand it)

Then comes getting the damn thing out. All the computers are jammed in there too, I have them removed here and they're hanging out the left and bottom of the photo. The red line is the line that goes to the master from the reservoir and the top hard line coming out of the master goes to the slave INSIDE the transmission. (Yeah. It's awful. I know.)



Its better to undo the top line that runs from the master to the slave first, then undoing the tube that leads to the reservoir, then undoing the 2 bolts (11mm) that hold the thing in place. I had started to strip those bolts so I bought some new bolts at the hardware store. The only size they had was 13mm, which is great, cause most of this damn car is 13 already.


This what the master looks like, I tried bench bleeding it by plugging that weird side nozzle (which leads to a line to fluid reservoir) and pouring the fluid in the top and pumping the bottom.



I thought the bench bleeding worked until I got it all put back together and tried the clutch. I pumped for about 400 pumps and no change in anything.

The transmission nipple was open (you can make out the nipple above the line to the slave) and I could hear fluid moving around the new master, but no change at all to the reservoir level or the firmness of the pedal. I think the hose to the master may be letting air in, but I seriously doubt it. I'm going to try and bleed it tomorrow. Also the front tire is flat so I'll also be dealing with that. Onwards and upwards.




Bonus shot of the 2019 Volvo XC40 Turbo 5 engine without the plastic cover.

[BLINGMW]

Well good luck today, I don't have any bright ideas. The very few times I've done this a half-assed bench bleed worked out fine.

And the Volvo T5 isn't a 5 anymore? WTF. 

[Jake]

I like old Saabs, but ownership stories make me leery. Glad to see you pressing on no matter what! Hopefully it's easy enough to get going again.

["running!"]

Alright, so I got a vacuum bleeder and was able to get some pressure back, but then had to come back to Harrisonburg. I will still need to get it re-inspected and patch the front tire, otherwise, I seem to be back on track. Another question for when I get it back to Harrisonburg is, where the hell will I keep it? I could keep it out front of my house, but I have a psycho neighbor who already harasses me for living at this house and we only have to spots out front for two cars, my Mazda and my roommates Hyundai. Plus, just getting it back to Harrisonburg is no guarantee that I have solved the transmission gremlin. I've done this job three times now, with it eventually failing the two previous times.

["running!"]

Bad news, naturally. "It's the slave cylinder, stupid!" I thought to myself as I couldn’t get any pressure in the clutch in the inspection line. I barely even limped into the inspection line. Look at this slave. There's definitely something wrong with it.




This is the neck and nipple from the slave. The line underneath the nipple connects the master to the slave. Notice the neck is somewhat bent. It has always been bent, but it was always centered in the access hole in the transmission, instead of jammed to the right. This makes me think that this sudden movement of the slave has happened before, and resulted in the neck and nipple becoming slightly bent by the time I bought it. Plus, now it looks like the slave cylinder’s rubber cover was ripped away. It did not look like this when I headed out to the inspection. This is what the slave looks like. 



By the time it was my turn to get inspected, about half an hour, the brake fluid was at about half capacity and 0% clutch pressure. I had filled the reservoir when I bled the system to about 75% pressure. That is the highest pressure I could get in the pedal. I chalked it up to me just not having a great bleeding system, but especially after seeing the brake fluid reservoir Exxon-Valdez itself, something else is definitely going on. But since I got it towed back to my parents, I haven't lost a drop!

I think the slave has been slowly leaking air when doing its job since I first changed the master cylinder. I suspect I might have put a small hole in it because I didn't relieve enough pressure in the brake booster.

Either way, I still need to find a way to get it to Harrisonburg. I think I'm going to rent a truck and dolly to drag it down so I can begin work. A U-Haul trailer is $200, which sounds like a lot, but to get this thing highway ready, I don’t have the tools or the time to drive up to NoVA every weekend and to pay a repair shop would be $1,000 at best to change the slave.

To change the slave, start by dropping the subframe, then the engine, then the transmission, then open the transmission and then you can change the slave. It’s that simple!

["running!"]

Two years after my last post, and about one year since I last turned the 'ol 9000 over, it's sold. I said my final goodbye a Wednesday or two ago and helped load her up with the buyer, a nice Euro car enthusiast named Tristan who is moving to southern Maryland from N.Y. He has worked on Saabs in the past and agreed with one of my requirements before selling that the car must go to someone to willing to get it back on the road. It became clearer and clearer I wasn't going to be able to give it the attention it deserved and I felt bad about letting such a great machine wilt while I hemmed and hawed.



Here is my last photo with it. This is the first time I have not owned a Saab since I got my first one, a '96 900 Turbo in 2013. Nearly a decade of Saab ownership later, I still regret nothing and have not learned my lesson. I will buy another someday. But for now, just focusing on work and my Mazda is getting me around. However, I am considering getting a Pontiac Grand Prix GTP from the turn of the century if I can get a cash in trade for my Mazda.

[Senor_Taylor]

Wow! Ian without a Saab! Always good to hear from you and I hope you're well!

Talk to Ben B if you want a Grand Prix!

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