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Re: Blown Head Gasket
Posted by John Hudak (more from John Hudak) on Thu, 9 May 2002 12:07:17
In Reply to: , Kok Chen, Sat, 17 Dec 1988 12:00:00 

>   That's utter nonsense!
> A sample size of one is meaningless.

I agree, a sample size of one is meaningless...but the sample size is seven
out of nine! Two of which are my personal experience.  While not a purely
'statistically correct sample' (sampling theory in the back of my mind seems
to tell me I need at least 32 samples)  I believe it is significant.  While
someone here suggested that I may have used anecodotal evidence to fashion my
opinion, here are the facts that led me to post what I did (I am the original
poster of the 50K comment):

I personally owned a 81 900 T and 93 9000 CS. I am an electrical engineer 
with a minor in mechanical engineering (advanced degrees in EE as well). I 
don't deal with anedotes, I deal with facts and these are the ones that I 
am personally aware of.  I worked with 7 other smilarly educated and 
meticulas engineers who bought SAABS ( 79 900T, 77 EMS,  83 900S, 87 900T, 
89 900S, 94 900S, and 96 9000T). Out of this total sample of 9 saabs, 7 had 
head gaskets replaced under 60K.    Given the education and understanding 
of electrical and mechanical engineering of the people involved, and in 
each case their well above normal understanding about automobile engine 
mechanics and operation, it is my opinion that you can rule out all the 
usual trite excuses about lack of maintenance, or not following the proper 
procedures i.e. cool down, oil changes, people not understanding and 
knowing how to care/monitor/repair their vehicle,  etc. etc...knowing these 
people and myself, things were done 'by the book' and in most cases, 
'better than the book' - cool system flush every 2 years, oil and filter 
change every 3K miles,  cool down for 2 mins, etc. etc. And no, I haven't 
nor have my colleagues driven any significant distance (e.g. > 0.5 mile) 
when an overheated condition has occured.  This is another 'reason' why the 
head gasket failures occur, because *everybody* does this - right? errr NO, 
sorry, not in these cases.....
It burns me to no end when this gets thrown back at me and I know for a 
fact I've done everything 'right' and so have my colleagues.  (ah, but let 
religion get in the way of facts.....)

The majority of the repair work to mine, and my colleagues vehicles was 
done at a reputable Saab & BMW dealership. So, while this cannot fully 
substantiate the claim posed earler that finding competent saab mechanics 
is part of the problem, it does not fully disprove it either.  Its just a 
fact in situation.

So, we can go over each case of the cars above and dissect each failure 
which might make me correct my numbers to 6 out of 9, but,  it will not 
change my original opinion.  In addition, I have owned primarly american 
cars about 4 to date with well over 500K miles on them total, plus 
immediate family and friends, which I would estimate  to be 14 cars over a 
period of 25 years,  with an estimate of close to 2M miles total with zero, 
zip, nada head repairs.  Comparing those numbers to the Saab, in my mind, 
would reinforce my opinion - yes, I believe dealing with blown headgaskets 
is a fact of life with saabs. Now, I know of and I have heard the endless 
stories of 300K on a turbo, and 200K with absolutely no mechanical problem 
etc, but I would say that this is not what the average or normal experience 
would be.

In any case, I would take the response from this newsgroup with all of the 
good will and unbiased (objective) comments of which the opinions are 
rendered, but keep in mind that the disgruntled population has probably 
moved on to other vehicles and most likely do not read or contribute to 
this NG.

I will be the first to admit that my limited sample my not truly reflect 
the truth.  They are, to me, alarming.  They are biased toward the 
negative, perhaps as much as some of the readers have biased them to the 
positive.  The truth is somewhere in the middle, and I would personally 
like to see a statistically correct count of this issue.

John
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