I think that I'm nearing the breaking point with my SAAB c900 turbo. I bought it as a project car and possible GRM challenge car about 6 1/2 years ago. Its purpose in life was to be my dog & mountain bike hauler, and general purpose motorsports beater. I had planned on road trips, back road hooning, auto X, rally X, HPDEs and hopefully a trip to the challenge.
I bought it from a friend that runs an all SAAB indie shop. He bought the car as a non running parts car in a lot of cars from a dealer in another state. When they took the car off the trailer, it started and ran just fine. It was complete, and not overly grungy or rusty. He knew that I was looking for a c900 turbo, so he called me up and offered it to me for not much more than he had into it.
I bought it knowing fully that it would have problems that we didn't know about. After all, all c900s do, weather they cost $500 or $5000. The problem popped up after a few days. It had a weak head gasket. No milkshake in the oil or violent boil over, but it pressurized the cooling system instantly. No problem though, I bought a head gasket kit from my friend, and he let me pull a head from a totaled car that had a known good engine before he sent it to the crusher. A week later it was back on the road and all seemed well.
Then the cheapo aftermarket cat blew apart, which was really odd since the rest of the exhaust was oem and completely rust free. No problem, I knew where to get a perfectly good used oe cat. Problem solved.
Next the real trouble started. It started randomly not starting. But whenever I could find some time to trouble shoot it, it would start and run perfectly !? Finally after more than a year of chasing that issue I found a wire terminal with a bad crimp (from the factory ), in the block that the fuel pump relay plugs into. Based on that finding, and a cascade of other irritating electrical problems I've concluded that the wire harness must have been made at 3pm on a friday before a holiday weekend by a worker previously employed by VW. No other SAAB that I have ever owned has had this many electrical problems, and its not biodegradable wires, its bad workmanship.
Then there was the starter that lost its nose cone down into the bellhousing.
The boost controller that never worked right (wire harness again).
The alternator kept chucking belts.
The big bolt on the belt tensioner that mysteriously ejected itself.
The three master cyls that I had to go through to get one that worked right and didn't leak.
The electric cooling fans that never worked on really hot days (wire harness again).
The flakey fuel level gauge that finally quit this past summer. Now the thing is, in between all these problems it had periods when it ran brilliantly. Until recently I never stopped being optimistic that the flow of problems and chronic down time would end. I've squirreled away a collection of performance bits that if all put together on a car that ran right, would definitely make it propperly fast street car, and still be within a $20xx challenge budget.
Things seed to be going well with it this past spring and summer, I even got to take it on a short road trip through central PA farm country back in August. It was great ! Endless winding and rolling rural roads with the turbo spooled up for miles at a time.
Then the very next day it was back to its old miserable broken self. The battery was stone cold dead. I quickly diagnosed a shorted battery. It was a gell cell battery, and more than 5 years old, so I shouldn't have been surprised. I swapped in a battery from a different car just to move it out of the way, and was immediately greeted by a strong fuel odor. One of the hard plastic fuel lines cracked right by where it goes past the rear suspension. I tried to mend it, but on the first attempt the hose cracked again as soon as I pushed the hose barb fitting in. The second attempt went better, but weaps, so its not an acceptable repair. I feel like at this point I need to replace all the plastic fuel lines for it to be safe. And to add insult to injury the steering rack has
decided. to. leak all its all its fluid out while its been down.
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