Graphite Green 9-5 Aero rescue

[carrera]

Well, the rear door, front wing and front PU are off to be painted, so that will make a huge change when they come back and are fitted.

Back to some of the minor stuff. The ACC was giving errors 08 and 11 which are translated as problems with the stepper motors and the mechanism, generally suspected to be either a broken plastic lever or spindle, so I decided to have a go at fixing that today. What a PITA.

I have had both left and right stepper motors off numerous times, and a bit more besides as I was working out how it all works. Even easier when you have a a spare heater box on the shelf. Both problems are now fixed, and it was the motors in both case.

On the right hand side access is very awkward, but there are only two 6mm hex screws that need undoing. The issue here was that something has gone wrong internally on the gear / motor interface. I discovered that the output shaft was free to turn, when a comparison with the other motors showed that they could not be turned by hand. A replacement motor cleared that error code.

On the left hand side access is easier, and the plastic lever and rods all seemed free to move. In fact they were liberally coated with white grease, so I just double checked that both the upper and lower flaps were moving correctly by moving the rod when the motor was out. After a number of removal and replacement exercises I could see / feel that the motor seemed to be wanting to drive beyond the range of the operating lever. I expect some sort of load or resistance sender would have detected that and switched power to the motor off so took the Kwik Fit school of engineering approach to diagnosis and fitted one of the speres I had. Problem solved and no more error codes. I am grateful that all the plastics were intact.

Does the above make sense, and is there any history of repairs being made to these stepper motors ?

[sgould]

I've not heard of any motors being repaired, only kits for repairing broken pivots and rods.

[carrera]

Well, two more small torx screws and the covers are off revealing what I assume is a linear motor in two halves, plastic casings held together by many bent metal tabs. For the moment I have concluded that these are not designed for repair.

For the moment I am moving on, though by comparing the two removed motors I did notice that on the one where the shaft could be easily turned, the armature with the drive gear on it was extended compared to the other. The consequence is that the gear is not engaged in the mechanism to the shaft so the motor would be simply free to spin.

Out of interest, I discovered that while the plastic levers were good on this car, one of the ones on the breaker car was broken, still the motor was good, so making a good heater box out of two bad ones. 

Here's a photo that shows what they look like, which came from this page http://home.jtan.com/~joe/saab/code_08.htm which helped me yesterday. Of course whatever fixes code 08 can also fix code 11 

[carrera]

Door Mirrors, how difficult can they be 

The car has black mirrors, which shall we say are a bit manky on the triangle and metal areas. Well , I say metal, but it seems to be more like rough chalk.

I have pulled the drivers side off, and looked at the design and it's very different to my blue Aero and all the other cars except for the Glacier Blue one. After consulting EPC I discover that door mirrors changed from 2003 MY and as this is a 2003 car it has the later design. And now it is time for the but. But while the car is an Aero and has the powered folding button on the dash the mirrors that are fitted are non power folding, as they only have the black power connection, not the white one. The connector from the loom is in place.

I have been reading around and it seems that there are differences between PMM for those that have memory seats and those that don't

Have I understood correctly ?

If I am looking for another set to fit, is there any way to identify which ones would work, other than by the twin electrical connectors, which is going to make identifying a suitable pair on ebay quite difficult

I  was testing the memory function for the seats and having confirmed the mirrors are electrically adjustable I went to store some new settings in position 3 and there was no ping. The seat is now dead and the 30A fuse 25 is not blown. Looks like I am going to have to start reading wiring diagrams to get the seat working again    No doubt it will be some clever bus thing that is upset

[sgould]

I'm not with my info at the moment, but the 2003-on mirror heads are a different shape.  They use the same glass,  as the ng9-3.

The memory seats on the 9-5 are self contained as far as the memory and adjustment is concerned.  The I-Bus connection is, I believe, only there to let the car know what is going on.  So I-Bus is for the mirror memory to get the info it needs.  There may  be some other odd bits.

The basic logic of the memory seats is that both front seats have permanent power.  It's the passenger seat that has the control relay that turns the system on via a signal wire to the TWICE which earths it (green wire from memory).  Once on, the passenger seat will work.  Theres a blue wire from pin 28(? need to check this) to the same pin on the driver's seat.  Once the blue wire is live, the memory control module in the driver's seat comes live and you can move that seat as well.  If you by-pass the

The TWICE control turns the system on when the ignition is live. Also when the front door opens, and leaves it on for 30 seconds.  Maybe more.  If you don't use this, you can just earth the green(?) wire from the passenger seat relay and the seats will be operable at any time.  Not sure if this flattens the battery.  I think not though.

[carrera]

Passenger seat is working fine, this morning memory position 1 worked too. The motor was working for 2 seconds, then stopped for a second, then moved again, Battery voltage was 12.49v so should be OK, but the charger is connected now anyway

Then I moved the seat fully rearwards and it is dead again. Time to have a closer examination, but I can't get the rear bolts out of the seat runners at the moment  so electrical tests onto the connectors at the front are my next line of attack.

Update:

Remembering I had a similar problem on the blue one a couple of years ago with sticking memory buttons, I put some contact cleaner down the memory buttons and made sure they were free, then removed both terminals from the front of the seat and checked out connector block 1. I did observe that the plastic cover was already in the open position. This cars electrical gremlins have obviously been here before.

Everything checked out fine, so I reconnected and everything was working with smooth motor connections. The plastic cover was replaced and after a while the 2 seconds on, 1 second off behaviour has returned. It seems like perhaps a micro break in the loom, maybe I will find it, or maybe I will dismantle / reassemble again and everthying will be hunky dory 

Further update:

Seems I was on the right track initially. It's the memory buttons  https://www.saabcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=93287

Time for some more squirty, maybe after removiing the switch this time

[carrera]

Diagnostic progress, of sorts

The side cover of the sear is off, three T25 torx screws, two on the side behind covers and one underneath at the front which you just have to feel for.

The memory position switch is out, I have squirted some mote contact spray in, dried it with compressed air and tested that each of the buttons operates against the common 12v feed. Similarly made sure there is no continuity between +ve and the other contacts when the switches are off. My meter is showing about 1 M ohms on some of the connections.

When the memory switch is out of circuit, the motors move normally

When the switch is connected there is a beep from SID and the motors become jerky.

Sometimes when pressing a position button, there is the confirmation beep for a new memory position, even when M is not pressed.

There's full battery voltage to the switch connector, and the return paths all show 670 ohms resistance to earth, which I assume is resistors in the memory control module

[carrera]

Sorted.

That high resistance reading on the switch was nagging away at me. The switch unit looked like it could have been one of those switch units that explodes when you open it, but in fact, though it needs a few jewellers screwdrivers to prise it apart, it is actually quite simple inside.

The corrosion was cleaned with IPA and cotton buds. inside each of the rubber buttons is a flat copper connector, I cleaned that as well.

A test fitting confirmed that the seat was now working correctly and the memory button switch likewise.

The hardest part of this job in the end was finding a way to get the middle screw for the right hand cover into place. I needed to have the torxdriver on the screw in the plastic, while at the same time forcing the cover to the back and up to get it into alignment.

A simple solution in the end, and it was apparent from marks on the screws and the loose plastic cover over the connector at the front of the seat that someone had been in there before. They hadn't finished the job properly though.

[carrera]

So, back onto the mirrors after the seat diversion.

The glass removal was straightforward, next task was to remove the frame. This is held in place by 4 x T10 screws. The corrosion problems on these later mirrors is appalling. On two of the screws the heads broke off, on the third the torx bit broke, so now I don't have a T10 security bit.

I drilled the heads off the two remaining screws and removed the mirror surround, and then was able to remove the mirror cover and the plastic plate that goes against the body.

The motor is still in place, and I am wondering if it is worth the effort to remove it ?

If the screws break I need a new mirror head.

If I leave them in place it's just more difficult to remove the surface corrosion to clean it up. Whatever I do I am still faced with separation of the two mirror halves to clean and paint the rest of the mirror in something and I haven't yet worked out how to split the two halves.

Any thoughts ?

   

[sgould]

If they are folding mirrors, you can't separate the two halves.  The hinge is the big tube and I believe that it's swaged out at each end.  So unless you can "unswage and "re-swage", I would say, no.

[carrera]

Oh, thanks for that. I'm not surprised that the motors trip the thermal fuses when the powered mirrors are fitted. With all the extra mass from the oxygen molecules these mirrors were hard to fold back by hand.

Definitely a backward step by Saab in the reliability stakes, plus they get really nasty looking.

[carrera]

Today I started on cleaning up the drivers side mirror mount.

After starting with a wire wheel I ended up moving to a simple half round file and all the internal paint is now removed, well, it largely peeled off.

I'm going to etch primer it I think, but then what paint do you recommend to get the satin finish, in a colour something like OEM ?

Sharing the grot

[sgould]

It's a sort of white metal/aluminium base, so you will need the correct primer.

Some people have been using "Plastidip" on some things like this.  Despite its name it comes in spray cans.  If used on its own primer, it's pretty permanent, I believe.  If used on a flat surface, it will  stick, but can be peeled off if you don't like it.

It's been used successfully for covering the chrome headlamp surrounds on the "Dame Edna" 9-5 by people who think that there's too much chrome.  It seems to work, but I have only seen the results, never used it.  One result I saw was on the chrome.  The guy didn't like the finished colour, peeled it off and tried another colour.  It seems fairly durable.  It has a semi-matt finish.

I think that "Plastikote" from Wilko is similar, but I've no experience of it.


Otherwise it's a proper paint job.

[sgould]

The motor comes off in one piece with the three shiny screws.  I've never had a problem with those.  Don't try moving the face of the mirror by hand to see if it's free.  That can strip the teeth on the plastic racks that the motors drive up and down.

The motor stays in one piece.  The screws just fix it to the frame.

[carrera]

Thanks for that. Given the experience with the other 4 screws, and after a slight, perhaps even feeble attempt with the remains of my T10 bit, I left the motor in place.  I also left the spring and swaged retainer firmly in place.

The rest of the mirror shell was attacked with a wire brush in my drill and a half round file. The remains of the screws were attempted to be drilled out, but every time the drill bit slipped the ally was attacked, so in the end I drilled alongside the remains of the screw and then used a dremmel to open the hole up to align with the homes in the cover. The inside bottom screw was left alone as that is entirely captive and it remains a good locating pin. I will probably end up using chemical metal and either making a captive nut or just tapping it to retain the replacement screws. The fourth position screw will probably just be sikaflexed in place. None of this is ideal, but in the end the cover will be held securely in place.

Here's a work in progress picture. I used some etch primer at first, followed by a couple of coats of Hycote Satin Black I happened to have on the shelf. With that done I have then used filler to fill the parts where corrosion has removed a layer of metal. I'll leave that to go off overnight and finish off this one tomorrow and see how it looks then