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My new-to-me '96 CS came with nightmare problems including door locks that rarely unlocked or locked by the controller. (Rarely=NEVER, really.)
I did lots of reading on here and first of all I disassembled latch works on both back doors and freed up all stiff actions and linkages. (They were IMPOSSIBLY stiff, unmovable even by hard hand pressure.) Also made new pivot points for the links to door lock buttons as they had cracked under the impossible strain of trying to lock-unlock the frozen-up rear doors manually.
I also cleaned up the contacts (use a pencil-type ink eraser like they used to use on typewriter paper) on my center-console window switch panel, including the lock-unlock button. But no improvement, no reaction from door lock actuators at all when I rocked the lock-unlock button.
Then, I pulled the lock controller box.
On my '96 that meant pulling down a formed cardboard-and-black felt panel above driver's knees, five black panel fasteners with push-in pins in center. I broke one and figured out how to release them, but I should have broken all five as they're a real PIA to get out. The center pin pushes in to lock them in, needs to be pried up about 1/8" to release them. No real room to get in to pry them out but I used the smallest jeweler's screwdriver I had, pushed it hard, deep in, alongside center pin, then pried up. Kept re-trying and finally got the head of the center pin to pry out and release. You could just break them all and replace with more standard pry-out panel fasteners. Only needs a couple, not five.
The door lock controller is as others have said a black box, about 4 1/4"x1 1/4" x1 3/4". On the '96 it was mounted above a black metal bracket, with a square-cross shaped peg on one side that comes thru the bracket and is held by a forked spring clip that pulls off. Then squeeze both ears of the plug while pulling side to side and the wires come off.
Box says Saab 4102851, that's its part #, and also 40505359. Also, in raised letters, Kiekert, the German company that made it and also the door latch works etc.
Stick something into the two slots on either side and pry and stretch them out over the prongs and end comes out, revealing the circuit board. On my '96 that was labelled "Kiekert 5359-04."
Prior posts on here have said, over and over, the trouble is "cold solder joints" at the relays on that board, and recommend re-soldering them. First off let me tell you these joints had suffered NO stress cracking and they had plenty of still-bright, perfectly flowed solder on them. "Cold solder joints" is definitely NOT the problem.
I've read a few posts on here from guys who like me were skeptics and saw the same but tried anyways resoldering the leads to the relays and then reported miracle cures.
If that works it isn't by fixing bad solder joints on the boards in my opinion but maybe by reforming the relay contacts somehow from the conducted heat, or maybe up inside the relays there's a linking wire that is also soldered and has overheated, but gets reflowed when you solder the pins down below.
The relays look like a couple of licorice (if they made them) Kraft caramels, varnished down on the top of the board, and labelled "Siemens V23083" plus some other numbers. They are pretty small, 5/8" high x5/8"x7/16".
I tried prying their top covers off to clean the contacts but they wouldn't come apart easily. I think you'd need to desolder them from the board to get at them to do that.
One guy reports swapping the two of them around, on the theory that one controlled the hatch latch solenoid and the other the doors and gas cap, but that's not correct. The hatch latch is independent, works even with the door lock controller unplugged from car. These two relays work in tandem to make the door lock solenoids push or pull.
Anyway he got working locks afterwards so there may be something to the salutary effect of resoldering, though I'm a skeptic.
Maybe an electronics supplier can come up with identical relays from Siemens that will solder right into place?
What I myself did is, I had already come up with a replacement controller,
scavenged by me from a junkyard '94(?), anyway, a very thoroughly used older car, more years and miles than my 190K '96. (It was mounted VERTICALLY (peg on the side) on the FRONT face of a LIGHT-colored bracket, though almost the same place as on the '96.)
It looked identical to the '96 and had the same numbers painted on it. But I popped it open before trying it, and it's got beefier guts: The board says "Kiekert 5359-03", an earlier number,and the RELAYS are bigger: Siemens V23072, size 3/4" high x9/16"x5/8" (Different lead locations than on the smaller V23083 relays, so they couldn't easily be used in place of them.)
This new-to-me older controller board works perfect in my '96. It seems to me I read more posts from'96 or later owners about lock controller troubles than from earlier cars, and my guess is, the "improved" board design with smaller relays is the problem. I think the smaller relay contacts don't hold up as well as the older ones, under the strain they're under from current draw to solenoids pushing stiff door lock works on aging cars.
Another poster on here reported much better but not perfect lock controller function after he added a jumper grounding wire to one side of his relay panel. That makes some sense I guess. Better grounding might permit better current to flow to things? Then, however, he fixed things by swapping in a new controller as I did and REMOVED THE JUMPER WIRE! I'd have left it as insurance against recurring trouble, but who knows.
(By the way, someone on here says, in an otherwise excellent analysis guide, that if you don't hear two tiny clicks from inside the door when rocking the lock-unlock button on the center console, then it's your center console switch that's bad and NOT your door lock controller. But I knew from seeing and cleaning its points that the center console switch was perfect. Yet I could not hear a thing from the door, no clicks, nothing. What he said might be true sometimes, but in my case my controller or its relay contacts were really bad, not even sending a weak pulse out to the solenoids in the doors.)
Hope this helps others. My advice, first free up the inside-the-door latching mechanisms' lock function mechanics, on all four doors, so the controller and actuators don't have to work superhumanly (or rather, superelectromechanically) hard. Then if your lock-unlock feature still doesn't work or is erratic, look for a controller from the earliest late-style body 9000 you can find, with identical numbers: Saab 4102851, with the interior board labelled Kiekert 5359-03, with the bigger relays.
If I lived far from a junkyard I might have desoldered the relays and tried to get them open to clean them. Or just, as others have recommended, resoldered them in place.
And oh, yeah, it could just be the fuse, on my '96 that's Fuse 16, 15 amps. It's joint with the interior lighting so if your doors don't unlock and lock by switch, and the inside lights don't work when doors are opened, maybe it's just a bad fuse.
posted by 71.241.206...
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