1986 Saab 9000 Turbo
UPDATED: January 26th, 2005
A quick update. The poor beast has been sitting home while I've been at college the past two years. I got to drive it whenever I went home for break, and was planning on bringing it to college this year, but it crapped out the week before I came back to school. We're pretty sure it's the fuel pump, but I'm not going to be able to work on it till summer. A sad day indeed. The only upside I can see, is that it's not being driven all over the salty, muddy roads of NY in the winter.
We bought this baby for $300 a year ago. It needed a little bit of work, but it ran, and it was a turbo.
Among the things that we needed to immediately replace were; muffler downpipe, serpetine belt, crankshaft pulley and brake pads all around. And then a few things throughout the year. Naturally. Saabs are fairly high maintence - at least compared to my parent's new Toyotas.
She was a great buy. The turbo is still very lively. Shifts great. There's a bit of a shimmy at about 55-65MPH, which is annoying, but ultimately harmless. The brakes work well, and handling is quite nimble. The 0-60 times for Saabs are always a bit lower than one would think, and I think the factory numbers tend to underapreciate the car. Regardless, turbo 9000's can kill much more powerful cars at highway speeds.
So far it's been great to me. I started putting mobil 1 in it, at 245,000 miles. Yes, it is a high mileage car. When we bought it, it had 242,000, as seen in this picture which I took shortly after buying.
The body is in great shape. I recently replaced the front grill and headlights after a minor collision (rear-ended a truck - my bumper went under his, broke my headlights, put two tiny dings in his chrome bumper.) So we bought a junker, and replaced the doors also, which were fairly crispy on mine. Now it's in the best shape it's been in in years.
I would like to do acouple minor tweaks to it - lowering, perhaps pushing the boost up a little bit - but nothing extreme. I want it to last through college.
The interior is in great shape. Creme leather, very supple.
My stereo system is fairly decent, consisting of:
� Blaupunkt CD head unit
� 2 Blaupunk front 4" 2-way speakers (front)
� 2 Sony 6 1/2" 3-way speakers (back)
� 1 Sony 560W amp
� 2 Jenson 10" subwoofers (bandpass box)
I'm happy with the set-up; I'm not a basshead or anything - I was going for a clean listening experience, preferably at high volumes. This set-up does such admirably.
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