1999-2009 [Subscribe to Daily Digest] |
Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup
Well, it was a nice idea - drive down to Florida from New York with my girlfriend for a few days in the sun. We took my 99 9-5 2.3 LPT. Things didn't quite go exactly to plan.
Things started out fine, leaving NY at 0630 on Sunday for the long drive - we figured 15 hours on the road. Traffic was light, the weather was good, and we made excellent time through NJ, DE, MD, and VA. South of Richmond, my girlfriend, who was driving, mentioned that she thought she heard an odd noise. I listened but didn't hear anything, and she said it had disappeared. I figured maybe the hooter valve was acting up, as it does periodically make that strange whistling noise that they do.
Fast forward to halfway through NC, me behind the wheel. I hear something - coming on or off the throttle, an intermittent metallic hum. I only hear it for about 30 seconds, then it disappears. OK, pull off at the next rest area and do a quick visual inspection - nothing amiss under the hood. Pulling out onto the highway, I look back and see a puff of blue smoke as I accelerate. Uh, oh. That's a turbo failing. This is not going to be good.
Get it back underway and find that the noise is recurring more frequently now, but only when on or off the throttle; steady-state cruise is quiet and not smoking. Lock the cruise control in and let it run at a constant speed in the hopes of minimizing the damage to the turbo, and maybe get it to our final destination of Jacksonville. Since the failure seemed to be very gradual at this point, this did not seem unreasonable.
The failure went quickly from gradual to catastrophic a few miles from the SC-GA line. I got boxed in by a semi and an RV, and had to get off the gas. As soon as I touched the throttle, the car dumped a huge smoke cloud and started misfiring. I pulled onto the shoulder, kept it running, and attempted to coax it as far as the nearest exit, a mile and a half ahead.
I got the car onto the exit ramp only to have it stall out on me. I managed to get it restarted and into a Days Inn parking lot. I guess we're staying here tonight, baby. My girlfriend, to her credit, was nothing but helpful and supportive through this entire ordeal, and is truly one of the good ones. I am very lucky to have her.
We got the yellow pages and started checking for a suitable shop first thing the next morning. We were incredibly fortunate to find Certified Import Repair in Savannah, subsequently confirmed by a favorable SaabNet listing. I spoke to Ralland Robbins, a fine and dedicated mechanic, who agreed to take my car in. AAA flatbedded us there, and we arranged to get a rental car while mine was being attended to. For all of this trouble we still managed Jacksonville by late that afternoon.
In spite of the problems he faced, Ralland got the car squared away with a new turbo direct from SAAB, did an incredibly thorough job cleaning it up after the horrendous mess of the turbo consuming itself, and had the car ready for us to pick up Thursday morning, our intended time and day of departure. We picked up the car and chatted about the experience with Ralland and Carmelita at Certified, dropped the rental off, and got back on our way. 17 hours later (20 total since we left Jacksonville), no thanks to night construction on the NJ Turnpike, we rolled in to the driveway, dead tired and incredibly thankful to be home. The car performed flawlessly on the ride north.
Not the way I wanted things to go, but all things considered, if the turbo was going to fail anywhere, ending up within towing distance of Savannah was remarkable. Certified Import went above and beyond in taking care of us and my car - I cannot recommend them highly enough.
Technical notes: The car and turbo had 115k miles when it failed, and had showed absolutely no signs of failure prior to this - no smoke at all. The failure was spectacular, and the turbo shaft had a huge amount of play in it - the fact that we babied it for several hours without it blowing up or even smoking appreciably was remarkable. One interesting side note was the fact that we managed 30MPG on the way down at 75-80, but got 32MPG on the way back at the same speeds - could be that even minor oil leakage was having the effect of knocking down the octane rating of the fuel, and thus reducing the total timing advance.
posted by 68.198.1...
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.
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
