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DI Cassette Blues
Posted by David Prantl (more from David Prantl) on Sun, 21 Oct 2001 22:53:51
In Reply to: , Kok Chen, Sat, 17 Dec 1988 12:00:00 

>  I have a 'new' '96 9000CSE which just turned 49K.  Seems  like at idle it 
>has an occasional miss, not real bad,  and I don't notice it missing under 
>load, at least not  very often.

How much boost do you get ?  All the way to the yellow/red border, or just 
half-way into the yellow ?  If you have rough idling and the latter, you 
should eventually see the 'CHECK ENGINE' light come on.  At that point, the 
best thing to do is to visit the SAAB dealer to have the fault codes read by 
their scan-tool, and take the necessary corrective action.

>  Someone suggested I might want to purchase a new DI  cassette and keep it 
>in the back just in case.

That's an excellent idea.  Being on the cheap side personally, I have a 
good-used spare cassette with me on long trips.  A new one is several 
hundred dollars, while a good-used one is only about $80.

>  I thought by '96 all this DI cassette business had  been sorted out.

I wouldn't bet on it.  There's always some chance the DI cassette will fail. 
  I won't be comfortable until I see a sizeable population of owners seeing 
trouble-free performance from their original cassette for 10+ years and 
200k+ miles.  As far as I know, this hasn't happened yet.

>  Does this thing give any kind of consistent pending  failure symptoms or 
>does it just fail catastrophically  without warning?

Usually, it's a catastrophic failure with no warning.  There's no drama.  
The car just stops running and won't restart.  I have also seen them 
deteriorate to the point where the car still starts and runs fine, but you 
only get base-boost (half-way into the yellow range on the gauge).

>  Front main seal appears to be leaking rather badly as well.   How rough 
>is it changing it out?

Well, there are a few tricky things, like loosening/tightening the 
crank-pulley bolt, and dealing with the automatic serpentine-belt tensioner. 
  If you've replaced the front crank seal on the '88, then you should have 
the crank pulley bolt think under your belt already.  The only difference is 
that the '94 and newer transmissions don't have an inspection window in the 
bellhousing through which you would insert your flywheel blocking tool.  
Otherwise, the key to the automatic tensioner is to make up a holding tool 
that keeps it compressed, and to remember that the floating-pulley bolt is 
reverse-threaded.  once you have the belt off and the crank pulley off, you 
won't see a bolt-on oil pump housing like on the '88, but rather a huge 
circlip holding things in.  You'll need an appropriate set of circlip 
(internal snap-ring) pliers to get it out.  With the oil pump cover out, the 
seal swap is pretty much the same as on the '88.

I strongly recommend using the latest iteration of the original SAAB crank 
seal.  Part number 91 73 576, ($13).  You should also replace the 
oil-pump-cover o-ring.  Part number 91 30 600.  A severe oil leak could soak 
the rubber part of the crank pulley, which could eventually lead to the 
pulley's failure.  Inspect the pulley carefully and replace it if oil-damage 
is apparent.  Pulley part number is 91 44 841 ($135).  This would also be a 
great time to replace the serpentine belt, which should be available at most 
generic auto-parts stores.

David Prantl
david_prantlno39sdcx6spamx782hotmail.com
'84 900S, 5M, 210kMi, RIP as of 2/98
'89 900, 3A, 116kMi, restored and SOLD on 3/24/01
'86 9000T, 5M, 190kMi
'88 9000S, 5M, 142kMi
'90 9000S, 4A, 133kMi
'93 9000CSET, 5M, 74kMi
'97 9000CSET, 5M, 60kMi
'68 97 Sonett V4, 4M, 76kMi, #000467

Posts in this Thread:
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