Since my last foray into European cars went so well... How about an old Saab?

In reply to wae :

The APC controls a solenoid (round, brown/tan, three hoses, bolted to the front crossmember by the coil) that controls pressure to the wastegate. When you step on the brake (or if using CC), the APC stops controlling boost, by allowing all pressure to the wastegate. At this point, the wastegate will open at its mechanically set "base boost" level, or half of full boost.

Base boost can drop over time. Stock, it should be about 5.5 psi. If when you floor it while the brake pedal is pressed you don't see much boost on the gauge, then the wastegate needs to be adjusted. If you always use good gas, 7 psi base boost will make the engine even more responsive. Or just set it to stock - just adjusting it will make a difference.

If you don't have an accurate gauge, just drive the car, mash gas and press brake, note needle position, adjust wastegate, repeat until needle is mid-yellow, i.e., ~5.5 psi. 

This has little to do with your launch issues, except that the appearance of no boost suggests base boost ain't right. (But, yes, disconnecting the brake switch when you're getting your Swedish Fast and Furious on will get you to your 1/4-mile destination a bit sooner.) 

In reply to procainestart :

Okay, well, I guess we should define the scale that we're using a little better....  You're using a boost scale like this:

0---1---2---3---4---5---6---7---8---9---10--11--12--13--14--15--MAX

I tend to use a scale more like this:

0---notyet---stillwaiting---willweeverboost---thisamountdoesntmatter---ohforcryingoutloud---wtfisgoingon----ALLTHEBOOSTS!

So, yeah, it's boosting to about the middle of the gauge.  But anything under full boost is basically no boost at all.

I do need to play with the wastegate arm and maybe fiddle with the vacuum retard a little though. 

This car was super fun to see in person! Thanks for all the help!

In reply to singleslammer :

Thanks for letting us be a part of it! 

I wish I would have made the connection in my brain a week ago so I could have told you to your face that I've been enjoying Junk Connoisseurs.  It wasn't until maybe yesterday or the day before I finally put two and two together on that...

In reply to wae :

That's so funny! I swear at one point that you said stay fresh cheese bags to someone and that you knew that it was me. This makes that so much better!

New Avatar and tagline to make it easier for people to yell at me for inaccuracies from shows.

Gave the Saab a quick bath and took it to a cruise in last night.  There are a couple more problems that are bubbling up that I need to address.

The valve cover has started to leak a little bit so there's a little bit of oil smell as it drips into the exhaust manifold.  I can't imagine that will be a very big job.

Every once in a while, the car won't start.  I suspect it's something in the ignition switch, but I suppose it could be the starter.  Of course it never happens at home or at the shop where I have troubleshooting tools.  I kind of think that we just let that go until it fails all way.

Finally, at idle the alternator seems to be vibrating a bit but If I up the revs a bit, it smooths out.  I'm wondering if I didn't get all the bolts all the way torqued.  I do have a new alternator on the shelf, so that's an option.

Otherwise, it's really just chugging along nicely.

Since I had the day off yesterday, my daughter and I went out to the shop with the Saab to fiddle around a little bit.  We noticed that the rear speaker and courtesy light on the right side had stopped working, plus I wanted to take a look at the alternator and begin investigating the A/C.  The speaker bit was easy enough; the blades on the speakers are just a hair smaller than the connectors on the wiring harness so one side just slipped off.  Some electrical tape will take care of that.  The light was just a little loose in its holder, so that's working now as well.

I can't tell if the alternator bushings need to be replaced or not.  There was a fairly significant amount of movement, but I put another half-turn or so on the bolt and it moves a little, but not a lot.  The idea of using a rubber bushing pair to mount an alternator is a bit new to me, so I'm not sure how much give is supposed to be there.  It's not visibly bouncing about at idle anymore so I'm guessing it's "good enough" for now, but I do have a pair of new Dorman bushings.  When I was in there last, I wasn't able to see how I would ever be able to get the bolt out, so I may need to rock the engine around a little to get it in place, so I decided to leave it alone for now and we'll keep an eye - and ear! - on it.

While all that was going on, I hooked up the pump and pulled a vacuum on the AC system.  I had previously taken a look and at some point the system had some level of R134a conversion performed.  The gauges dropped down, so I hooked up some air and put about 60 PSI into the system.  It held that for a while, so we went back to the vacuum pump and let it run for about 45 minutes or so.  The manual says it takes 1kg of R12, so I think that means that I should put in about 800g of refrigerant.  I had two 330g cans so I put those in and so far, nothing.  The clutch isn't engaging unless I connect to directly to battery voltage, but I'm not getting any cold air in the car even with the clutch jumped.  Maybe it's still not quite enough refrigerant, but I'm wondering if either the expansion valve or the low pressure sensor is faulty.  I'd think that even low on R134a, with the clutch engaged, I should be getting some level of cooling in the car.  We were running out of time, though, so I put "buy more R134a" on my to-do list and we boogied out of there.

I did notice that the little actuator that closes the fresh air vent was not connected.  There's a little vacuum pot that is supposed to be activating when the system is in re-circulation mode.  If I'm reading the manual correctly, it should be closing that when the A/C is on and the recirc switch is depressed.  And that doesn't happen at all.  When the system is in what we would now call "MAX A/C" mode, it's also supposed to close the door and that part works now that the vacuum line is reconnected.  What doesn't work, however, is the blower motor in that mode.  The blower works in all the other switch positions (er, I think...), but in what should be full A/C, it as though there is no power to it. Looks like it's time to go back to the wiring diagrams!

Oh... I also have ordered up the valve cover gasket so we can take care of that little oil leak.

There is a 92 convertible in the Dayton LKQ PnP, I was there last Friday with my sons to grab some stuff for my middle son's car.  The interior was fairly picked over but other than that is looked good.

Hmm...  I'd kind of like to have those wheels, but I'm not sure I'd want to use the janky tire machine that yards usually have and I surely don't want to spend $100 on tires I'm going to throw away....

Might be worth getting the fuel level sender, though.  And another spare braking system.

In reply to wae :

If you head up let me know, Tyler needs some other stuff anyway.

In reply to EvanB :

Wicked!  Thanks for pointing that out - I haven't had a chance to check facebook for a couple days.

This car has gotten me more compliments, more thumbs-up, and more attention than anything I've ever driven.  I did not expect that at all when I bought it.  I thought it was just a neat old, quirky, orphan car that would be fun to play with, but it turns out that it's quite a bit more than that!

re: the alternator bushings

I'm not sure how the Saab mount looks but Volvos of the era also use rubber bushings to mount the alternators and they wear badly which throws the belt angle and tension off. A common upgrade is polyurethane bushings, but even the OEM Volvo rubber ones allow for basically no movement when new. All that's to say; I'd replace them. 

The car has been leaving a bit of a puddle wherever it goes, so last night we tackled the valve cover job along with an oil change.

In the service manual I have there was a lot of talk about getting #1 to TDC so the distributor could be removed so we fiddled with that for a bit.  I have no idea how I would ever get a socket on the crank pulley since the engine is in there backwards.  But in the process of investigating that, we discovered that the underside of the car was a horror show of oil.  I wiped down the block and the subframe as best I could.

After going ahead and draining the oil, we realized that the engine position only matters for the 8 valve engines and since this is a 16 valve engine, the cover just pops off like a normal normal motor.  So back down on the ground and the valve cover was off in no time.

The cams don't look great but they don't look completely horrible.

For 137,870 miles, I'm okay with that.

We cleaned up the mating surfaces and slid the new gaskets in place.  The old gasket had some RTV around the distributor hump, but everything I read said that it should be installed dry.  Once the new gasket was in place, I chased the threads and the daughter got the bolts installed to 144 inch-pounds.

The power steering fluid was also very low, so we topped that off.  Hard to tell what of the puddle was oil and what was power steering fluid, though, so it's going to have to be something we watch.

For the last couple days we have been preparing for my daughter's road test so there has been a lot of parallel parking and other slow-speed maneuvering, lots of that done at full-lock.  The steering wasn't making any noises or showing any low-fluid symptoms until we started that.  My theory is that the seals are holding everything in under normal conditions, but when you're pulling the wheel at the lock it starts puking past them.

I put a bit of cardboard under the car when we parked it at home last night and this morning it was clean.  Previously it would leave its mark in the time it takes to give it a quick wash, so I'm hopeful that the puddle's primary cause was the valve cover.  We're going to keep an eye on it.

In other news, my daughter used the car to take her road test yesterday, so she's got her "restricted license" now and in 6 months she'll be able to get her full license.  To celebrate, I let her take the Saab to Grandma's house where she played Uno and watched a movie with my mom and made them both exceptionally happy.  Today, we celebrate my first day of freedom: I didn't have to take her to work this morning and later on she's going to pick up my middlest daughter from work and then the two of them will join us at a party.

It's a weird feeling to watch my car pull away from the house without me in it....

Remember that thing where the car wouldn't start sometimes?  Well, it died and wouldn't restart on my daughter as she was leaving a friend's party this evening.  And on top of that, the key wouldn't come out of the ignition, either.

I trailered it back to the shop - in the process of loading it up, the exhaust got caught and is banging around again - and set about trying to get the key out.  Apparently, there's some way to remove the whole lock cylinder, but they say you need to remove the driver's seat.  Those bolts are nasty enough that I wasn't about to attempt that.  Instead, I wound up putting a crack in the trim so I could get it out from around the key

I had a replacement switch that came from the car we picked over in the junkyard.  Once that was installed, all was right in the world again. 

The gasket should get some extra goop. I've always used Loctite 518, if you have it kicking around. 

Re: alt bushings - I've never used poly because forum posts said they fall apart. This was years ago, though, and given how bad some of the aftermarket rubber parts have gotten, perhaps it's better... 

Re: oil leaks. Plenty of sources, but if the underside of the hood at the windshield has oil on it, the crank seal is leaking (pulley is flinging oil up). 

Prolly worth snugging up the clamps/connectors on the PS system. If the res is cracked, replace w a later black one (91?? or 92+), not opaque white. A rack R&R sucks, so you might consider a slow fluid change by periodically emptying the res w a turkey baster and refilling. Or just do the whole flush. 

It's moot, but you can turn the engine with a prybar in the ring gear teeth. Turn counter clockwise, when facing the engine from the front of the car. Don't turn CW - chain guides no likey. 

I forgot to add that the 92 vert in Dayton is a manual.

Well, crap, then.  I guess the valve cover will need to come back off and get cleaned up and have some RTV applied.  At least that's a fairly easy process.  I looked through the manual and couldn't find anything about it but I didn't look closely enough.  I based my decision on some forum posts from a while back with a couple people saying very confident words about how they never used any and thought it was a bad idea.

It is absolutely leaking again/still, though, so I need to figure out where.  I haven't looked at the hood yet to see if we're slinging oil upwards, but I don't recall that any of the belts were bathed in oil when I was trying to find a way to turn the crank pulley.  Thanks for the tip on the ring gear, though!

When I bought the car, the exhaust was kind of sketchily attached.  The tailpipe was wired on, there's a clamp that holds the pipe to the block, the pipe is bolted to the turbo, and that was pretty much the whole attachment system.  Before the Challenge, I used some stainless steel zipties to secure the muffler to its mounting points and it stopped banging around and did okay. 

Over the weekend, I didn't have any wood blocks to put under the ramps and I was not in the best of terrain so in the process of winching the car on the trailer, one of those u-bolt exhaust clamps got its nuts caught on the edge of the trailer.  It took some doing but I finally got the car loaded, but I guess I managed to destroy the metal zip ties because the exhaust was hanging low enough to be scraping whenever the suspension worked.  Last night, we put it up on the lift and went to work. 

Walker makes the rubber hangers for the muffler and my plan was to stop at the FLAPS and pick up a couple of them.  I would swear to you that I checked the website last week and they had them in stock.  But they no longer show in stock, so that wasn't going to work.  My daughter was able to pick up a hanger that would work for the tail pipe section, so my plan was to wire up the muffler for now, use the hanger for the tailpipe, and then either put a new u-bolt clamp on with the bolts not hanging down or to just weld the pipes together and do away with the clamp.  After getting it up in the air, I realized that the center pipe section was actually about an inch and a half too long and it was pushing the back section of the exhaust - including the muffler - to a position that the regular hangers just didn't line up too well.  Which is probably why they weren't there!

After a moment of pondering, I decided that the right thing to do would be to shorten the center pipe so things would line up better.  Unfortunately, despite the muffler being a slip-fit over that center pipe section, I could not get it to un-slip.  I took a grinder to that afore-mentioned u-bolt clamp and got it out of the way, but the pipes were just stuck together.  So we went with plan B which we code-named "Operation Sawzall" and cut a section out of the middle of the pipe and then welded it back together.  It's not pretty, but it's not leaky, so:

The hardest part, of course, is trying to weld the top of the pipe while it's all still on the car.

I had some spare u-bolt clamps, but since the welder was out anyway:

In the process of all that, we noticed that the front exhaust flange only had two of its four bolts, so we grabbed some left over M8 hardware and cinched that up.  Then the rubber hanger went on the tailpipe:

And some more metal zip ties went on the muffler:

I'm going to order up some of the correct rubber hangers to see if it's close enough for those to fit.  Honestly, it's still not quite 100% right - you can see how the tailpipe hanger is a little askew - but I don't think it's worth doing too much more at this point.  If anything, I would consider pulling the front section apart, putting a cat back in, and throwing a resonator between the cat and the muffler.  But I don't think that will ever bubble up to the top of the project list.

At this point, however, the exhaust is tucked up nicely where it's supposed to be.  With that little section removed, it's actually able to tuck up a little higher than it was before and with that stupid u-bolt clamp gone, it should easily clear the ramps of the trailer should it ever need another ride.

The muffler hangers have arrived and are sitting at the shop, waiting for me to get my Mother-in-Law's pickup truck de-rustified and out of the way of the lift.  So far, though, the metal zip-ties are doing the job.  The only reason they failed was because I got the muffler stuck on the trailer's lip and just sort of winched through it, as it were, so I'm not that concerned.  But I'll get to that as soon as I can.

We really need to give the engine a thorough cleaning so that I can figure out where the oil leak is coming from.  It's dripping a fair amount - maybe enough to puke out about a pint or so every 1,000 miles - which is more annoying that anything else.  There's no more oil dripping on to the exhaust and I've run a paper towel around the valve cover and it doesn't appear to be leaking.  There is oil pooled on top of the oil filter housing, sort of around the pressure sensor, so that's a possibility.  The belts are all dry and clean with no tell-tale oil spray on the underside of the hood or the firewall, but there is some oil on the front (or is it back?) of the engine.  It's below the oil filter housing, though, so it's either running down or it's a timing cover seal (does this car have that?) or a front main seal along with something going on at the filter housing.  For now, the rule is to check the oil every other fill-up and don't park in the driveway.

Filter boss gasket dying? 

The oil cooler lines from the filter boss can leak. Or maybe the connectors are simply loose? 

Pressure sensor is all snugly in its hole, I assume? 

Is it possible that the filter was spun on by a certain young mechanic and isn't tight enough? 

There is an oil line for the turbo that runs beneath the intake manifold - something amiss there? 

The timing cover and the endplate both have paper gaskets... 

Rear main seal - that is, at the front of the car, cuz, you know, engine in backwards - could be bad. But, on 5-speeds there's a hole beneath the clutch where oil can drain, and idk if autos have the hole. 

In reply to procainestart :

Other than the oil filter, I am going to use that as the oil leak checklist, thank you!  I already checked the oil filter because I've been guilty of that before.  I also verified that the old oil filter gasket came out with the old oil filter because I've done that one before as well!

Before I can do much of anything about this, though, I've got an F-150 parked over top of my lift that I need to get out of the way.

The Saab remains in the queue for the oil seepage problem, but it had to get pulled in last night for a more pressing issue.  Upon pulling in to the driveway to turn the car around, the lower valance under the front bumper fell off.  It looks like it was held on at one time with some bolts that threaded in to some sort of insert in the bumper cover.  Those bolts and inserts were all corroded and I guess the last one just gave up yesterday.

It may not have been the right way to fix it, but I used a grinder to take off the rusted out bolts from the valance and then drilled out the bolt holes in the plastic to accept a standard-ish trim clip like this:

Using a pliers, I pulled out the remaining bits of the inserts from the bumper and then we re-attached the valance to the bumper with the clips.  It seems really solid so I'm happy with it.  Where the sides connect to the bumper towards the bottom of the valance, I couldn't get a trim clip to fit so we just slipped a zip-tie in there to hold it together.  I think there was a bottom section to the valance at one time, but it's long gone so I'm not worried about it.

Otherwise, it just continues to chug along!

It failed to start again today.  I grabbed what tools I had in the house and dashed over to the university parking garage.  I figured if the problem was the switch again, all I'd need to do is clamp the wires together and then bump the starter wire.  But that didn't work.

I unplugged the wire from the starter itself and jumped that to the battery and it started turning.  After plugging it back in, the key works again, but the battery was too dead.  We borrowed some jumper cables and it started right up with the key. 

I took it over to the shop to try to see what was going on but of course I can't check anything when it's all working properly.  I assembled a kit to put in the trunk: jumper cables, the Torx multi-tool, some gloves, a test light, and my remote starter trigger.  When it fails the next time, I should be in a better position to troubleshoot.

While I was looking under the hood, I discovered the source of the belt noise that's been going on.  For some reason they use two alternator/water pump belts instead of just one.  Swedish Normal.  One of those belts was tight.  The other was very loose and frayed.

I ran over to the FLAPS and got two new belts - after explaining multiple times that, yes, I did want two belts of the same part number - and ordered up the oil pressure switch.

I hate to say it, but I'm kind of getting good at doing the belts.

While I was there, I checked the pressure in the A/C system and with the system off, both sides still show the same pressure as they did a while ago.  I didn't have the energy to screw around with putting more R134a in, but at least any leak in the system isn't that big.

wae said:

It failed to start again today.  I grabbed what tools I had in the house and dashed over to the university parking garage.  I figured if the problem was the switch again, all I'd need to do is clamp the wires together and then bump the starter wire.  But that didn't work.

I unplugged the wire from the starter itself and jumped that to the battery and it started turning.  After plugging it back in, the key works again, but the battery was too dead.  We borrowed some jumper cables and it started right up with the key. 

I took it over to the shop to try to see what was going on but of course I can't check anything when it's all working properly.  I assembled a kit to put in the trunk: jumper cables, the Torx multi-tool, some gloves, a test light, and my remote starter trigger.  When it fails the next time, I should be in a better position to troubleshoot.

While I was looking under the hood, I discovered the source of the belt noise that's been going on.  For some reason they use two alternator/water pump belts instead of just one.  Swedish Normal.  One of those belts was tight.  The other was very loose and frayed.

I ran over to the FLAPS and got two new belts - after explaining multiple times that, yes, I did want two belts of the same part number - and ordered up the oil pressure switch.

I hate to say it, but I'm kind of getting good at doing the belts.

While I was there, I checked the pressure in the A/C system and with the system off, both sides still show the same pressure as they did a while ago.  I didn't have the energy to screw around with putting more R134a in, but at least any leak in the system isn't that big.

With the ac system off, both sides should show the same pressure.  Which is maybe what you meant, I just wanted to clarify!