saab

Saab maintenance #2 – check engine light and fuel cap

13 Comments

This afternoon, as I drove out of petrol kiosk after the gas fill up, the “Check Engine Light” (CEL) on my main instrumental cluster came on. Immediately made an appointment with the dealer to bring the car for a check tomorrow.

So in the meantime, I googled for the possible  and common cause of the problem, and interestingly top in the search list pointed me to the fuel cap not tightened properly. I wasn’t convinced by the explanation, but then I was telling myself, no harm trying since it is not difficult remediation to apply.

I went to the car, open the fuel cap door, and found that I could tighten the fuel cap further by one turn!  I then reset the ECU by taking out fuse #2 and #4 and restarted the car. The CEL no longer appeared, although I was experiencing some rough engine idling. I thought it was just a case of ECU adapting after a reset, and true enough, the engine idle speed stabilised shortly after awhile. I drove the car out for a test spin, the CEL did not light up even as I “boost” the car.

So the problem was finally solved! Reflecting back, I realised the problem probably had occurred at the petrol kiosk. The petrol station attendant did not tighten the fuel cap after the fill up, resulting in the CEL. Nevertheless, it was a good inexpensive lesson learnt, and again it’s internet and google that came to my rescue!

Saab maintenance #1 – Cooling system

Leave a comment

There’re many things I like to blog about, but most of the time, I didn’t because I was simply lazy to post.

1047289

However, there’s one area of topics I like to blog moving forward, is a chronological recount of the car maintenance activities I have carried out on my Saab 93 Sports Sedan. I thought with the blog, I could build a knowledge base out of it, for future reference purposes, be it on my current or future ride.

And we shall start with what had happened over the weekend, as I was driving in a hot afternoon (my scangauge told me that the ambient temperature was somewhere between 36-37 °C)

A very familiar warning beep chimed off . The car SID (Saab Information Display) displayed a intimidating  “A/C off due to high engine temperature” message.  My instant reaction was to look at the water temperature gauge on the car’s electronic instrument cluster. The gauge needle was already at the 3/4 mark, close to the ‘Red’ danger mark. I glanced through my scangauge, the exact reading of the water temperature was 125°C, and then subsequently hovered between 126°C to 128°C.

Continue reading →

Power of internet

1 Comment

Sometimes you wonder what happens if there’s no internet.

Over the weekend, my Saab 93’s pinch protection system went out of calibration. The driver’s window would not wind up fully as a result. I went through the driver’s manual, and all it says was how could one temporarily override the pinch protection.

So I thought maybe I should just google for an answer, but as usual, there’s alot of irrelevant search results, plus some of the solutions posted were not effective.

In the end, it took a combination of google search plus some intelligence (erh-hm)  to get the issue fixed.

1. First remove the fuse to the door control model (for the door where the window is problematic). The fuse can be accessible either from the side of the dashboard (for driver and front passenger doors) or  rear boot (for the rear passenger doors). In my case, it’s the driver door, and it’s the fuse #15 I need to take out.

2. Wait for a minute or so before plugging the fuse back. This is to ensure that the memory of the control module is totally erased. Otherwise, you will find that the pinch protection remains out of calibrated.

3. Once the fuse is put back, the memory of the door control module should be erased by now. So now it’s time to re-calibrate the door window again.

4. To calibrate the door window, press the window button to roll down the window completely, before rolling up the window again. Repeat again, and you should be able to hear a faint chime, indicating that the recalibration is successful.