Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2003 21:00:59 GMT From: Harvey White <madynnopsametcom.com> Subject: A tale of fog lamps, turn signals, and a curb.. (kerb if you would)
The bottom line to this is that I was checking out all the neat features on the 2000MY 9.5 I got, and noticed that the steady turn signal lamp on the front passenger side was not working. Further investigation revealed some scrapes, and a thorough lack of a connector to the lamp with two wires somewhat wrapped about the existing wire to the fog lamp. Hmmm, says I (having discovered a burned out lamp (drivers's side door, bottom) that made it past the certified inspection.) Must have been there... I sure don't remember doing THAT.... End result of a trip to the dealers was that I did NOT get the fog lamp assembly replaced, nor did they fix the thing for me... They said (and reasonably so...) that if the car was like that, you accepted it that way.... Certified or no... OK, says I, I can understand that (and they felt rather bad about it, but they were not going to pick up the charge for this....) Saab would ask for the failed part, and there really wasn't one, just a damaged one... Ok, I tried. Talking to the technician (a REALLY nice guy... I got several recommendations about the car in general (they DID fix a disconnected hose that was causing a small leak...). They did say that their normal fix (and this seems to happen a lot) was to replace as needed. However, rather than charge me the money, they very kindly gave me a new light socket (bayonet twist and remove) from a different car, with permanently attached wires. A little soldering, some heat shrink tubing, a few wire ties, and the light is now back in business. (heat shrink is the two layer stuff... inner layer melts and seals, outer layer shrinks...). A little more work with some 5 minute epoxy repaired the broken parts, as far as I can tell... more on that as we see how well it holds, but with a little light sanding on the bottom of the rubber "add on", I suspect that it will look as good as new. Bottom line, this is a fix that you can do yourself, given a helpful Saab technician with a spare part ('twas free, BTW). And.... The next year, Saab has redesigned the foglamp assemblies so that the connectors are all on the top.... Wonder why they did that (innocent look.....) I'm not sure what I want to do about this (other than replace the other one should it ever happen again... not hard to do...) but I wonder if anybody has put a feeler gauge, or some sort of sensor to warn you if the concrete parking curb is getting too close.... Especially the ones sized for an SUV..... Harvey
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
