1979-1993 & 94 Conv [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup
I was on a roll today after my success with the fuel sender unit, so I decided I'd replace my faulty charcoal canister while I was sweaty and still smelled like gasoline. A new one from Sobstory was $48 and change plus shipping. Cheap for a Saabfix! But what a chore it turned out to be.
I've been hunting for a vacuum problem and I knew the little diaphram on the top of the canister (my Saab manual calls it the Evaporative Loss Control Device, or ELCD) was bad. If you apply vacuum to the top (control) hose, it's supposed to open a valve that allows vapors from the canister to go through the larger hose to the intake manifold. A third hose from the fuel tank brings vapors to the ELCD when the engine is off. Anyway, my old one was shot -- I could suck or blow on that top vacuum line with no resistance. The diaphram had blown out.
Replacing the stupid thing was a royal pain, typical of most of the nasty little jobs I end up doing on the Beastie. The ELCD is located down behind the left turn signal lights, under the cruise control module. It slides down into a bracket on that wall so there are no nuts or bolts to remove to get it out of there, which is nice. The problem is, there's a bunch of other junk in the way. To repeat my oft-stated lament, Saab engineers did NOT make replaceable parts accessible in this car! This COULD have been a 1 minute job, but noooooooooooo....
I pulled the APC box out first. Two torx screws hold it on, and the electrical connector on the bottom unclips from it and swivels off easily. It took only a minute to get that out. Then I reached in beyond all the wires and vacuum lines and worked the two vacuum lines and the vapor hose off the ELCD. That's hard to do reaching around everything, but I managed after a minute or two of struggling.
To get the ELCD off its mounting lugs, you only have to lift it up about an inch, then pull it away from the wall. That's easier said than done. A big bundle of wires runs just above the ELCD and I had to stretch them out of the way. I ended up clipping a plastic tie-wrap holding the bundle to the wall, giving me a little slack. With some more grunting and wrestling, the ELCD was off the wall.
Then came the fun. How the heck to get it out of there? I turned it, twisted it, semi-inverted it, and could =not= get it free. In disgust, I realized I was going to have to do some further disassembling of the car to get it out. I ended up taking several odd electrical and vacuum components off that engine compartment wall. My wife observed that one gizmo was affixed with a torx screw, another had Philips head screws, and a third had 8 mm hex head screws. Guess the factory just couldn't make up their minds on sheet metal fasteners, eh?
I did NOT want to pull off the cruise control module (CCM). It's stuck on with these little rubbery plugs, and last time I messed with them, I tore two of them in half and had to go buy new ones. So I was determined to leave the CCM in place. I did have to take the vacuum line off the CCM, though, to get it out of the way. I suppose the whole job would have been much easier if I'd just pulled the CCM off, but it seemed I could work around it if I tried. So I left it there in the way.
With the other gizmos off the wall, I was able to rotate and manipulate the old ELCD out of the well. Whew. Now, a simple matter to reverse the process and install the new one, right?
The new ELCD was wrestled down into the hole, and I made an awkward attempt to slide it into the mounting bracket. It did NOT want to be there. That wire bundle kept getting in the way. With my faithful wifey assisting (and yes, I'm taking her out to dinner again!) I kept at it until my back was knotted and I couldn't straighten up again. Dang, I HATE bending over that engine compartment! I took a break.
Re-examining the area, I discovered the APC connector had fallen down underneath the ELCD bracket, preventing the ELCD from settling down. It was hard to see in there, even with a fluorescent lamp, droplight, and flashlight all working at once. I put a bungee cord on the big wiring bundle to hold it up out of the way, carefully moved all the semi-attached gizmos, hoses, and connectors out of the way, knelt on a pillow beside the car, and with my wife holding the droplight, I groped around with the ELCD again. This time, success. You just can't get that thing on there by touch -- at least I couldn't. The only method that worked was eyeballing it with one eye and holding my tongue just right while I sweated and pushed and coaxed the blasted thing into its holder. What a pain!!!
You know, I'll bet the dealerships don't bother hooking the canister to the wall when they replace it, and there are probably hundreds of Saabs on the road today with it clunking around loose in there.
The rest of the adventure was anticlimactic. I put the hoses on the ELCD and CCM, reattached the little electrical and vacuum gizmos to the engine compartment wall, clipped the APC connector back on, and remounted the APC. Done.
Test drive? No big difference. I've still got the same vacuum problem I had before, though I'm showing just SLIGHTLY more vacuum now. Sigh....
...But at least I've got a good ELCD in there. The birds and flowers probably appreciate it, even if the Beastie doesn't! (And tonight, we're eating Italian.)
- = M = -
'87 900T 158K
No Site Registration is Required to Post - Site Membership is optional (Member Features List), but helps to keep the site online
for all Saabers. If the site helps you, please consider helping the site by becoming a member.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
