Messages

1

Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: Non Saab jobs - satisfaction

« on: 03 May 2024, 01:58:04 PM »

Ring round local garages and tell them that you're not insured and taxed and need an MOT and find one that will collect/drop the car, they'll be insured on their insurance then and there's no arguing that they're going for an MOT (as an aside the trade policy I was insured on explicitly said I was insured to drive cars without the owners permission, useful in the trade as you can find yourself driving cars that come from other garages). If necessary they can use trade plates but I believe you don't need to have VED if you're going too/from an MOT.

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: Non Saab jobs - satisfaction

« on: 03 May 2024, 10:53:02 AM »

I used to get cross with the local Saab dealer for doing a service on the car before they did the MOT. "what if it fails.... I have a freshly serviced car that I can't use?"

Christ, I always used to send them for MOT before even putting them up on our ramp to look at them. Of course there would then be the awkward times that it would pass the MOT and then we'd notice the thing that should have been an MOT failure when doing the service and having to have an awkward discussion with the customer who'd already looked up online and saw that it had passed...

and he can then spend £3500 on the insurance for a 500 quid car

Unfortunately you're not really insuring your car, you're insuring against the damage you can do to other cars... and as lots of companies have an inability to stock parts (I'm looking at you JLR) so that people end up in a loan car for 6-12 months.... and/or ramped up the prices on parts to an unsustainable level even a minor bump can run into several thousand quids worth of parts needed if it's a new model...

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: Ex Saab MD 9-5 NG for sale

« on: 17 April 2024, 09:51:22 AM »

Silly money, especially as the remap isn't done by Hirsch or a reputable Saab tuner which I would say would significantly devalue the car in my mind.

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: What I Did To My Saab Today.

« on: 26 January 2024, 01:35:27 PM »

Absolutely agreed. When faced with that annual quandary I always remember sgould's mantra: "the cheapest car is invariably the one you've got" ...

Totally, I just looked it up and bought this one 27th January 2016 with an view to replacing it in around 4 years! With the way I now work from home, covid and the price of newer cars it's just ticking along nicely.

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: What I Did To My Saab Today.

« on: 26 January 2024, 09:12:57 AM »

Sounds like good news: another year of use & not too much to do to keep her in tip top condition 

Totally agree with that, I was looking recently at what I could replace the 9-3 with that would be objectively better and an upgrade and it was looking like I needed to spend a big chunk of cash in excess of £10k+ really. That's a lot of maintenance and repairs for the Aero even with paying £700 a year in VED.

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: What I Did To My Saab Today.

« on: 25 January 2024, 09:38:10 AM »

Yesterday was service and MOT time at Indysaab in Rushden. MOT was passed with the expected advisories (headlamp is cloudy, I have the repair kit just not had the right weather or the round tuits to do the job) and front numberplate is getting a bit worn. Service time was just an intermediate and aux belt and plugs. They also quoted me for a new aircon compressor as the old one is rattling and attended to a few other little bits and bobs, front tyre was losing pressure so they resealed it, refitted a heat shield or engine cover, found a slightly worn engine mount (there's a clunk from the front of the car sometimes which they had a look at).

Again, have to highly recommend Indysaab as they know their stuff and did all of that for just over £300 which seems like a very keen price to me, I just hope they are charging enough as I would hate to lose them.

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Saab 9-3 Sport Saloon / Convertible / Combi (Wagon/Estate) / Turbo X / AWD (2003 on) / Re: Windscreen washer bottle

« on: 25 January 2024, 09:31:42 AM »

I hope it's just the seal on one of the pumps that has displaced, I once replaced a failed pump on mine and didn't get the seal quite right and it flooded everywhere. It's a bit of a scraped knuckles job too, especially tricky in colder weather but not too difficult, maybe put some WD-40 or similar on the screws now to clean them  up and make them easier to remove the wheel arch liner when you do the job and make sure you've got a few spare screws for those that break when you do the job.

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: Cambridge Saab / Buckingham & Stanley

« on: 03 January 2024, 04:46:21 PM »

Funnily enough I had someone collar me in Morrisons car park today as he saw my 9-3 Aero while he sat in his NG9-5 and was asking me where to take it locally... His poor NG9-5 had really rusty sills just in front of the rear wheels and a very rusty front wing! At first I thought it had a bad accident repair but it was both sides. I told him to take it to indysaab though as they'd know a good bodyshop for certain.

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: Cambridge Saab / Buckingham & Stanley

« on: 01 January 2024, 12:04:14 PM »

I'm in Cambridge and now take my car to Indy Saab in Rushden, make of that what you will about local options in Cambridge however I will say that I have never used Swedish Car Connection so would like feedback about them.

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Saab 9-3 Sport Saloon / Convertible / Combi (Wagon/Estate) / Turbo X / AWD (2003 on) / Re: Saab 9.3 TiD Sport - how to drag car out of garage ?!

« on: 21 November 2023, 10:31:49 AM »

However, if you have the key, there should be a key blade within it, that should at least allow you to unlock and open the driver's door (once you can get to it).

The 9-3 only has a physical key lock on the left hand side, this is a problem in right hand drive markets. Don't ever park the car so you can't reach the passenger door if you have an RHD car. I've had to break into a few in the past because of this...

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Saab 9-3 Sport Saloon / Convertible / Combi (Wagon/Estate) / Turbo X / AWD (2003 on) / Re: Saab 9.3 TiD Sport - how to drag car out of garage ?!

« on: 21 November 2023, 10:29:35 AM »

If you want to smash a window and you don't want to involve a windscreen fitter.  The little triangular window in the back door is a very expensive Saab part (£140 when i last looked), but relatively cheap as a used part (around £20 on eBay).  But get one in your hands first and make sure it's the right part and glass colour.  The glass is bonded to the frame, and the frame screws in place.

Do not break those bits of glass! they turn into a real nightmare to get replaced. Front driver or passenger window is (typically) a lot easier, however speak to a local Saab specialist before breaking any glass.

I would suggest speaking to local car recovery companies, you can also get airbags to lift cars to get dollies underneath them and a local recovery company may have this. Or speak to a local Saab specialist, I have in the past powered up a car by removing a wheel and a wheel liner and breaking into the loom for the alarm box as it's got a permanent live feed which can help you unlock the car but it really depends on access.

If you want to DIY then I'd try to use dollies if you have access.

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Saab 9000 (1984-1998) / Re: New 9000 acquisition

« on: 16 November 2023, 01:37:48 PM »

The Twin had Bosch Iridium in when I bought it. Without going into the reasons why I could see the misfire counts increasing, which was eliminated when I put some fresh PFR6H-10 in. Maybe it's a Bosch vs NGK thing

We used to make a decent amount of money from the local Bosch service centre, they were doing fixed price services on 9000's and 9-5's and undercutting us, after about 1000 miles the cars would develop a misfire and very often this would be accompanied by a CEL... The issue was Bosch plugs, replace them with the standard spec NGK and everything would be fixed.

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Saab 9-3 Sport Saloon / Convertible / Combi (Wagon/Estate) / Turbo X / AWD (2003 on) / Re: Was I asleep when that happened?

« on: 13 November 2023, 09:01:22 PM »

I'm pretty sure when I bought the manual Aero in 2017, road tax was around £280, which was pretty goo, I thought, for the kind of car. The autos were far more.

More recently, I seem to remember it being ariund £300 - 320, but the jump to £365 was more than I was expecting!!!!

The annual rise is in line with inflation, we've had a lot of that recently hence a bigger jump. I think the rates were:

2018 - £270 -
2019 - £290 - 7% increase
2020 - £300 - 3% increase
2021 - £315 - 5% increase
2022 - £330 - 5% increase
2023 - £365 - 10% increase

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Saab 9-3 Sport Saloon / Convertible / Combi (Wagon/Estate) / Turbo X / AWD (2003 on) / Re: Was I asleep when that happened?

« on: 10 November 2023, 10:27:21 AM »

Just had my reminder.  2007 Dame Edna auto £675…

I have a freind who scoffs when I say my VED is £675 for next year and I should get a newer car as she "only" pays £200/year and how I'd "save" money... when I point out that her car finance is over £700 a month it seems lost on her that it would be a very expensive way to "save" money. I worked out the other day that since I got the 9-3 in Jan 2016 I've covered 57,500 miles (ish) and it has cost me a total of about £345 a month, that's includes all fuel, buying the car, all maintenance, all parking fees, all insurance. Absolutely everything!

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Off-topic chat, Help, Advice, General motoring issues / Re: Cheap cars for new drivers

« on: 02 November 2023, 08:42:18 AM »

I was in rural Norfolk at the time so less than half the premium would probably be about right. The remember the first time I ever drove on a dual carriageway was on my driving test!