6 7 8
RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/12/24 7:38 p.m.

In reply to dj06482 (Forum Supporter) :

Good looks. I do have WIS downloaded, it was a savior for vacuum lines and ground locations. I have to double check my ambient sensor is working but it still doesn't explain the fact when I jump the clutch on the compressor that high and low side pressure are both ~95psi. 

dj06482 (Forum Supporter)
dj06482 (Forum Supporter) UberDork
8/12/24 10:30 p.m.

I think the pressures are typically equalized until the A/C compressor actually  kicks on. I'm seeing the same thing on my car, when the compressor won't engage - both high and low show the same values. When I jumper the compressor, it just makes horrible sounds, but doesn't do anything. Can you hear yours engage when you jumper it? I'm not an A/C expert, but am going through what sounds like a similar troubleshooting process.

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/12/24 10:56 p.m.

The lifter tick went away earlier today while I was attempting to charge the AC so that's good news.  The finest $70 Walmart battery improved the starting situation dramatically.

I finished a couple other little things, cleaned the windshield and took the car for a little drive this evening. This thing is a freaking rocket ship once you get boost! Granted I swapped an 06' Aero turbo on and flashed a slightly modified Aero tune onto it but E36 M3 this comfy little Swedish Accord pulls like a freight train. A very wobbly freight train though, it's laughable how worn out the struts are on this car and I suspect something in the rear suspension has a rather wallered out bushing.  Couple that with a very squishy brake pedal makes for an experience.  I know the car could probably stand to get some fresh front rotors and a bleed on the rear brakes should help the pedal but for a 3.5 mile commute she's running like a top.  No leaks from what I saw, just some stuff burning off the exhaust and a slight wiff of clutch reminding me that I probably shouldn't have beat on the car quite so hard in her first 12 miles on a fresh motor. In my defense I was just seating the rings.

I need to adjust the autoleveling headlights because they are pointed pretty low and there's a light on the dash. I probably should check the sensor in the rear but also it's another reason for me to figure out what is going on with my Tech2. I tried to delete the security system with the Tech2 last night and it wouldn't boot fully just made one beep and then a blank blue screen.  From some googles there's a few things that can go wrong on these Tech2 clones so I'll do more digging on that. I'm so stoked to have this car running so well and it's a blast to drive.

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/12/24 10:59 p.m.
dj06482 (Forum Supporter) said:

I think the pressures are typically equalized until the A/C compressor actually  kicks on. I'm seeing the same thing on my car, when the compressor won't engage - both high and low show the same values. When I jumper the compressor, it just makes horrible sounds, but doesn't do anything. Can you hear yours engage when you jumper it? I'm not an A/C expert, but am going through what sounds like a similar troubleshooting process.

Yes. I can hear it engage, feel the revs drop and then rise as the compressor puts load on the engine, and see it engage on the hvac gauges I have.

Aaron_King
Aaron_King UltimaDork
8/14/24 10:44 a.m.

You get your 9-5 on the road and my middle son, with having to ride the bus to school for his Junior year of HS, finally finished up a couple of things on his 86 900 and drive him and hi sister to school this morning.

 

I ended up trading my oldest my 02 9-5 Aero for an 05 C230 Komp Merc sedan with a manual.  The Mercedes has about a third of the miles on it and is very nice but man I miss the thrust of the 9-5, and the seats.

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/14/24 10:49 a.m.

I took the Saab on a little grocery run last night. This thing is so much fun, stab the gas and it just goes woosh you're going 70 now. I forgot how much fun a manual turbo car can be. It's no where near as nimble as my FiST but the turbo torque shove is intoxicating.  Now I just want to start hoarding parts for part 2 of the Saab like injectors, bigger intercooler, slightly larger turbo... maybe next summer this car needs to get me to work all fall and winter. I want to find a set of silver Aero bumpers and some Klingon wheels to really complete the look on this car. 

There is a small oil leak that showed up when I pulled into the driveway. It looks like it is coming from the back of the engine but not the valve cover. I'm thinking either a check valve in the PCV system is stuck or the oring on the dipstick tube is flat and not sealing. I really don't think it's blow by relayed but I suppose I should check compression to rule that out. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/16/24 5:42 p.m.

So I checked the PCV valves and they are operating just fine, the hose from the oil separator to the oil pan was loose so I added a hose clamp to that. Short drive today to get a couple part throttle and wide open logs I still had the same oil leak when I got home so I pulled the valve cover because I had oil pooling on the intake manifold. Yep, there's your oil leak. It looks like I pinched the valve cover gasket when last pulled the valve cover to replace the timing chain damper in the top of the cover that I forgot to replace the first time it went on. Oh well I have an almost brand new one that I replaced on the car when I first bought it so that's going on and hopefully that's the end of the oil leak saga. 

I have a ton of reading to do on the Trionic software to understand fully what I logged but I have a couple quick takeaways. First, the engine is knocking slighting under full boost/full load and is pulling a little bit of timing up top. I think most of this is from two year old gas. The other thing is the air I'm requesting and the air I'm actually getting are a little off. Either I have a slight boost leak at full chooch somewhere or the PID control on the boost controller needs just a little bit of tweaking to give more boost. Like right up to 8-10psi my air requested and air received match and then up around 14psi the air received is about 5-8% lower than it should be per the tune. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/20/24 6:14 p.m.

This berkeleying car man... I drove it to my new job the last two days no issues until I went to start it up this afternoon to head home. Idled fine for a minute and then crazy valvetrain noise out of nowhere. I drove it home and took a couple logs on the way home. It isn't lacking power but  I guess I'm pulling that valve cover again tonight. It's supposed to be nice this week so maybe I'll take the truck instead of the Yukon tomorrow. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/20/24 11:18 p.m.

The timing chain tensioner ain't tensioning. It'll click forward when I roll the car in gear, roll the car the other way and the chain guide gets pushed back under chain tension.  I need to get a 26mm socket to swap this out in the car, but I'm hoping this is my problem.  I'm going to put the old OE one back in because this aftermarket replacement is garbage.

Aaron_King
Aaron_King UltimaDork
8/21/24 11:09 a.m.

In reply to RacetruckRon :

I will second using an OEM one.  We put an aftermarket one in Tyler's 900 and after about 50 miles it failed. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/21/24 11:20 a.m.
Aaron_King said:

In reply to RacetruckRon :

I will second using an OEM one.  We put an aftermarket one in Tyler's 900 and after about 50 miles it failed. 

Yeah the Preferred Components one lasted me 44 miles on this rebuild before it E36 M3 the bed. I'm hoping their guides, chains and hydraulic tensioner for the balance shaft chain hold up a little bit better indecision

spandak
spandak Dork
8/21/24 12:42 p.m.

I've found after market parts that involve rubber or polymer components are often suspect. I'm talking about seals, hoses, bushings, etc. I worked for an aftermarket company for a while and I found that generally the metal/plastic parts were decent but the rubber/polymer stuff was rarely correct on the first articles. 
 

So, imo, chain and guides are probably okay. But it's worth the money to buy OE tensioners. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/24/24 4:55 p.m.

Yep, that was not working right.

I got the grimiest of the two spare tensioners I have installed and rolled the engine over a few times to make sure the cams didn't jump time. All good there and buttoned up. Waiting on the RTV on the valve cover to setup before I go for a little test rip.  I did start the car up and it idled just fine for a couple minutes no clattering.

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
8/28/24 5:48 p.m.

I'm seriously entertaining putting this car up for sale. One of my Labs needs knee surgery and I'm short on cash. I'm not putting a healthy 6 year old dog down over a knee surgery. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
9/15/24 9:51 a.m.

The Saab made a 75 mile trek to the airport almost without issue. It averaged 32mpg on backroads and interstate according to the dashboard. Just as I got off the freeway and came to a stop I had an issue taking off from a light. I thought I was in first but the car stalled, restarted it and barely made it through the light slipping the hell out of the clutch. Something is wonky in the shifter because I was in third gear even though I was as far left and up as I could go. The shifter has always been very sloppy so I'm wondering if it's time for new bushings. 

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter)
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) MegaDork
9/15/24 10:11 a.m.
RacetruckRon said:

Something is wonky in the shifter because I was in third gear even though I was as far left and up as I could go. The shifter has always been very sloppy so I'm wondering if it's time for new bushings. 

Nah, it's fine.

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
9/15/24 11:27 a.m.

Some searching while waiting to board yields that my shifter is probably fully wallered out. The car was hard to get into reverse in the parking lot to get the key out until the car was off. I'm hoping I can at least get the car on the freeway on the way home Tuesday night. I'll use second gear from stops if I need to. There's a check engine light on that I didn't pull the code for before I left the park and fly. I'm thinking it's probably the catalyst error I cleared the other week which would be completely understandable given how I "unclogged" the cat in the downpipe. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
9/18/24 8:30 a.m.

Well, I managed to get home from Milwaukee last night in the Saab.  I tried to just go for it with the Saab to see if it had healed itself, nope no luck.  I keep a decent Milwaukee pocket work light in the car and that was a whole lot better than the flashlight on my iPhone for looking at the shifter linkage.  The plastic rod ends on the shift linkage assembly were all showing signs of wear but were connected correctly. The one bolt that holds the linkage assembly to the selector rod on the trans was loose. After a couple minutes of reaching my hand behind the engine from a couple different angles I was able to get the bolt aligned and started by hand.  As luck would have it I just got back from visiting a customer out in California and I had a few tools with me so I was able to throw a hammer store 13mm socket at it and get my ass home.  The Saab clicked off another 33mpg trip home, the heated seats work but the speedometer is off compared to the GPS on my phone so more investigating needs to be done there.

Mezzanine
Mezzanine SuperDork
9/18/24 12:54 p.m.

Is your speedo optimistic? My '03 9-5 reads about 3 MPH faster than GPS actual, which suits me fine since it means I'm breaking the law by a little less than I think I am most of the time. 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
9/18/24 1:04 p.m.

In reply to Mezzanine :

Yeah that's what mine does too.

alphahotel
alphahotel Reader
9/19/24 9:44 a.m.

My 2004 9-5 speedometer is about 4-5% slow.  I had a 2006 Audi A6 that was similar.  I have read (sorry, no citation) that European regulations are ok with the speedometer indicating faster than that actual speed but not slower, so the automakers err on the safe side.

 

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
10/11/24 9:46 p.m.

So one of the oil cooler lines had a slight drip on the engine side. I tried to fix it  and actually pinched the o-ring on reinstall and turned that slow drip into a steady stream. The Saab sat in the garage all week while I drove the truck to work every day, the Saab's heated seats were very much missed on the 42-50° drives into the office this week.  I didn't order new orings or new lines yet. I'm attempting to reuse the slightly hardened orings out of the other engine I got two Octobers ago. One oring didn't seem to completely stop the leak so I double stacked them on the problematic line and it seems to be alright after idling on jack stands for 10 minutes.  If I have to do this again I'm just going to weld a couple of -8AN fittings to my spare oil filter housing and run an aftermarket oil cooler because  I don't want to spend $60 on rockauto hoses just for it to still leak.

RacetruckRon
RacetruckRon SuperDork
10/18/24 8:44 a.m.

That damn oil cooler line seems to have a slight drip from the crimp. I'll have to order some rockauto replacement hoses.  I've been logging and making tweaks to the tune, I keep running into a mystery torque limiter that's capping me around 350NM of torque rather than the 410NM I should be hitting.  I swapped the ignition cassette and spark plugs with brand new OE parts I had on the shelf to see if there was any change. No dice. I think I'm getting oil in the cylinders from PCV or valve stem seals, though I haven't ruled out turbo seals either.

I had a rather smooth brain moment leaving for work early one day this week. I was completely lost in another though backing out of the garage and backed straight into Mrs. Racetruck's Escalade in the driveway.  Fortunately the Saab took the worst of the damage, the Escalade only has a dent in the plastic bumper and a new bumper scratch.  I shattered the tail light I just replaced a couple months ago on the Saab. So I swapped the tail light that came on the car that has a cracked lens.  What a way to start the day at 6am, if there would have been damage to the sheet metal of the Escalade I would have just gone back to bed.

6 7 8

You'll need to log in to post.

Our Preferred Partners
Ju4qu6SnVkDAyT4dwZ1A35phyHV2Tmi0YXytnhyOBgsH1GVd7xamOP3Txt6ImtcK