SAAB Question (2003 9-3 ARC)

Do eeeett. Worse you can is just scrap the car and wipe your hands of it..

Well, me and a friend went over to pick it up today. Second thoughts kicked in once I saw it. That paint is not nearly as good as in the pictures. A.K.A. Craigslist classic old pictures.

-The hood, roof, and spoiler all have some pretty bad clear coat issues.

-There is a pretty bad dent directly above the passenger rear tail light, and the whole taillight lens is gone. (Needs tail light, $75 on eBay)

-The tires are pretty bad, low tread, plenty of dry rot.

-The interior is actually pretty good. It could use a good cleaning, but overall for 182k miles it is in really nice shape inside.

-The key itself is kinda nasty and the buttons are gone, but I found out you can actually get a new key casing on eBey for like $12.

-Brakes are pretty rusty, we'll see how they clean up. E-brake is off as well, not sure what's up with is exactly.

-The battery is COMPLETELY dead. Even with our mini boost pack it wasn't enough to crank over. (One time I used that boost pack to jump start a v10 dodge truck, they are pretty nice.)

The guy said he parked it a year ago after he got 2 different quotes for it to pass inspection ($1200, and $950). Apparently he just didn't drive it for a while and then when he went to start it it wouldn't start. He said another person came to look at it and brought a new battery and it would crank and act like it wanted to start, but wouldn't start.

So I did end up getting it, but seeing as how it was not as pictured and rougher than I expected I talked him down to $100. Basically just to take it off his hands. (It was parked a previous apartment and the landlord wasn't super happy about it sitting there, so the aspect of it being gone was pretty appealing to him.)

Current plan is to get a new battery for it and see what it'll do. Possibly drain the gas and put fresh gas in. Hopefully I can get it running.

Oh this is going to be awesome, count me in!

For $300 you can't go wrong. If it has a functioning stereo amp under the drivers seat, you can sell it for $100 and you're 2/3 way to re-coup! The whole interior can be parted for way more than $300 as well. Likewise for the front bumper cover/spoiler.

They are also great cars if you get them running right. Go get a set of NGK copper plugs for your testing/getting it running. If you've had a car with a good shifter, you will find that the 6 speed feels weird. This is fixed with some metal bushings if you care.

Well, it's alive.

Thanks for the tip asoduk!

I borrowed the battery from my e28 (Who knew, they actually do use the same battery!) put in a set of copper spark plugs from advance, and it started up! At first it was a little rough, but it seemed to smooth itself out.

More info to come, I am going to start an official build thread. Total cost as of this point is $108.48 so who knows, this thing may make it's way down to the $2017 challenge.

Congratulations! What an awesome score. If it clunks in the front it is usually the sway bar end links. Then you can tune it for more boost!