2004 Saab 9-3

In reply to 759NRNG :

We have an 06 with just under 300K on it and the motor has never been apart, though they will eventually cook the ECU.

Aaron_King said:

In reply to 759NRNG :

We have an 06 with just under 300K on it and the motor has never been apart, though they will eventually cook the ECU.

Can the ECU be sent off to be repaired or do you just have to get a junkyard ECU and hope it works and lasts awhile?

I've never owned a saab, but almost pulled the trigger more than a few times. This thread has me wanting to correct that issue.

In reply to 759NRNG :

I owned an 05 2.0T from 189k miles up to 305k miles and it was still going.

From my experience the problem areas are as follows.

The coil packs can go out. It's best to get oem ones as replacements. I always found junkyard oem replacements for $20 or so. 

The plastic timing/balance shaft tensioner wears out. I replaced mine with minimal hassle and time. I didn't replace anything but the broken tensioner though. I'm sure if you do the timing chain and balance chain it would add some time. As far as just removing the timing cover to get to everything I found it to be pretty simple.

The ecu can go out. I was told the injector driver gets hot and fails. I just found a junkyard ecu and sent it off to an ebay seller to get reflashed. I believe it was about $130 for the ecu and reflash. 

There is a plastic coolant tee that can become brittle and break. It feeds coolant to the turbo. I found a metal one in the junkyard for minimal cost. 

I had a short in one of the abs wires from the rear brakes. I just ran a new wire from the back to the front abs unit.

The amp under the driver's seat can fail. 

The seals for the cam driven powersteering pump can fail. Cheap fix with new gaskets. 

The air intake leading to the turbo inlet can get brottle and break. 

The coolant cap cracks and fails. 

The car in my opinion was over all extremely reliable. Sure it needed the above common problems fixed at times but over all I found it too be a great car for the money. 

In reply to untchabl :

I ended up getting one off eBay, could not find an ECU in the junk yard.  There are instructions on how to flash it at home with a laptop at least. 

In reply to Blunder :

Thanks so much for all of that, I hope to do the same so that will be a great TO-DO list for me. 

The ECU is located above the exhaust manifold. There are riser/spacer kits available to move the ECU further away from the hot exhaust and also add some heat shielding. I will add one for cheap insurance and hope it helps. (And grab one from the junkyard if I see one.) 

I will probably address the tensioner and power steering pump before they fail, and I'll look at the coolant Tee. 

Not much to say about the Saab as of late, I have put off the preventative maintenance due to busy schedules but will get back to it sooner or later. The car is running great however, I have a new 60 miles a day commute through bad traffic (UGH) and took the 9-3 for a week and it did not miss a beat. I added an FM transmitter so I can use my phone/bluetooth and things are good. 

Home: 

Work: 

Love the vanity tag on the minivan.  

Not too much to report from Scandanavia, but the oil leak was getting worse and since I paid too much $$$ for a new driveway, it was time to stop leaking fluid onto it. Oil was getting into the #1 spark plug hole as well as out the back of the cover, so I decided on a valve cover gasket replacement. 

Pretty clean for 188,000 miles. 

Pretty straightforward and easy, the only issues I run into are brittle plastics. The clips on the plugs I can kinda work around, but the intake to the turbo is mostly cracked off, so a new pipe is in order IF I can find one. Other than that, still commuting and still ticking along like a fine Swedish fish. (s, I know the saying is swiss watch, but the Swedes are only known for their yummy little red fish, so)

Idk why but these are my favorite types of builds, simple basic save from the junkyard builds.  I'm currently in the middle of that with an infiniti G37 I got from copart.  I'm curious who told you an ABS/TC light would fail in Pennsylvania.  If there isn't a fault code with it, those lights being on aren't a fail item.

In reply to camopaint0707 :

There is a wire that runs from the rear hubs to the main loom, and apparently moving around over the years wears it out. Its a common failure point on these cars, not sure if road salt plays a role or not. 

pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) said:

In reply to camopaint0707 :

There is a wire that runs from the rear hubs to the main loom, and apparently moving around over the years wears it out. Its a common failure point on these cars, not sure if road salt plays a role or not. 

Yep, that is on the list of things to fix on my wife's 9-3 vert.  I would also suggest taking the plastic engine cover off to help prolong the life of the ECU.

In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :

I had this exact problem on my 2005 9-3. 

Well, I had my first breakdown. Coming home from work, after an hour commute and stop and go traffic, I finally got off the highway.  Coming up to a light, I got a low coolant warning message, then lots of steam. I quickly turned into a quiet parking lot and shut her down. A quick look revealeda plastic Tee in the upper radiator hose that was was now an I. The smaller hose had snapped off and released the coolant. 

My wife came to get me, and we stopped by a local parts chain to find a replacement. They only had a generic part that was similar, but sadly did not fit. So off to Amazon, and 2 days later I had my part. Popped it in quickly, mostly because of the 19 degree weather and high winds. All good and she is home safe again. 

I will probably replace it again with the one below, a metal Tee seems a worthwhile upgrade. I also bought one of those hose clamp tools, because without it I cant get the lower hose off. 

In reply to pinchvalve (Forum Supporter) :

This won't be helpful now but I had the same thing happen to me about an hour and a half from home. The small line that breaks off the tee is for the turbo coolant line. When mine broke off I took a hose clamp and clamped the loose turbo coolant line over the open hole on the tee fitting. I just made sure to stay out of boost on the way home and it did the trick as a quick temporary fix. 

The lights on the 9-3 kinda drove me nuts, so I decided to do something about it. The projectors were the high and low beams, a mechanical shutter switched between the two. There were additional H7 bulbs that were only activated by using the flash-to-pass with the car off. This did not jive with how they are supposed to work, and low beams were DIM. Through a FB group, I found a nice person about an hour away in OH with a Tech2 computer-thingy and the knowledge to use it. (My man also had 3 awesome Miatas in the garage undergoing repair and upgrades. Very cool.) 

After some poking around in the ECU, he was able to reset the lights to OEM spec, and disable the DRL function. Now, I can turn my lights off, or have just running lights, or have all the lights. The light switch works again! High beams are now low + the H7s. The mechanical shutters are not used anymore, which I find odd, but whatever. Low beams are still dull, but I can live with it. Here's the car vising a lake in OH that was pretty low.

I also played with the radio. The speakers in the doors and center of the dash are part of an upgraded audio package, and they don't work. Apparently this is due to the computer system, but no amount of resetting and marrying could get them to turn on. The AMP1 that drives them was replaced, so who knows? The rest of the radio works, so I'll look at wiring and the speakers themselves.  Its a common issue, and while having SOME bass would be nice (all bass is sent to the door speakers apparently) its not a deal breaker. 

I also decided to try my hand at buffing the paint. Why? Well, it was pretty rough, so I figured it would be a good place to learn some polishing skills. Using a pretty mild compound, I went over the car. IMHO, it was pretty successful. It's not a show car now, but it went from looking good at 20 feet to looking good at 15 feet.  

See? It looks decent from a few feet back in the right light and at the right angle. 

Not bad for a car that just rolled 190,000 miles. 

So what's been going on with the Saab lately?  Well, not too much really. I put in new HID bulbs, but that did nothing. Next step is to swap in new reflectors. 

The A/C fan stopped blowing, so I took the whole dash apart to investigate, but found nothing wrong. The actuator for the fresh air door was unplugged, and tested as bad, so I ordered a new one. Testing the fan on the bench showed that it worked but was sticking, so a bit of lube and she is back in action. Other than that, just rolling up the miles. There is an small oil leak of some kind that I will look into when time permits, and I'd like to seal up the exhaust repair a bit more. Maybe do bushings at some point.