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Project '86, situation report (a read + photo!) 1 Saabers Like This Post! Posted by Cmyles [Email] (#1126) [Profile/Gallery] (more from Cmyles) on Fri, 19 Jun 2020 13:59:56 Members do not see ads below this line. - Help Keep This Site Online - Signup |
As many of you know, back in 1986 Saab got hold of some bad wiring. The insulation would just crumble off for no reason (no evident chemical or physical attack, just bad plastic). The problem was discovered by Saab pretty quickly and 1987 and later model 900's don't seem to have any of that defective wiring. Some guys report having a 1985 or 1987 car with some bad wires but in my personal experience the problem is confined to 1986 cars. The fun part is that there is no way to predict how many or which wires in any random 1986 900 will be bad. I've worked on some where every wire I examined was beautiful and some where every wire was laid bare and then cars with only some wires bad. Of course deciding if a wire is actually bad requires more that a cursory look, sometimes they are crumbly in spots but not elsewhere and even good wires can be damaged at the ends or other places where they are subjected to chemical and physical assault over many years.
My current "front burner" project is my rust free, collision free, 150,000 mile 1986 SPG. I'm pretty sure this is a Colorado car since new (I bought it in 2004) so it suffers mostly from sun-burnt paint and upholstery (and dashboard). With a fleet of other 900 turbos to drive this car has been sitting parked most of time I've owned it. Now it's in my shop and on it's way to becoming my daily driver. The engine's been re-gasketed, transmission rebuilt and installed. Paint, new leather and headliner (carpets are still beautiful!) are slated for this summer.
But the order of the day is dragging out all the harnesses, splitting them open and dealing with any defective 1986 wiring (GULP!). As it turns out I got very lucky. I've found only ten or so crumblers in the entire front half of the car. The rest are all just excellent, nice and flexible and resistant to crumbling even when bent, scraped and scratched. I have a few salvaged harnesses from later cars and fitting in good, properly colored wires is tedious but not rocket surgery.
Just thought I'd share this with the C900 community and hope all of your projects, large or small, are going as well as this one.
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