ChasR's Repair Adventures! Ford/Saab.14/12 - More Saab Stuff

Yurp, got the dampers to do, had planned to do at the same time but took one look at the bottom securing bolt and thought I'd leave it for another day/month/year/just resell the dampers after I've binned the car.

As I'm normally a Land Rover fan a single bolt with slightly awkward access that requires a breaker bar + the break it bar extension is something I'm more than happy to put up with! 

So, that's the Saab updates for now. There has been another development, but that can wait.

Mainly, as I need to touch on another batch of cars we've had. You know what I am going to say. Mundaneos! But where did it begin. Like most things, it's a childhood thing.

When I was younger, I wasn't the most well child, so I had a few years out of school. There were reason for it, and I wanted to go back, but at the time I couldn't understand why (I do know why now). When I did, it was quite something for me. Granted, some things took some getting used to, I enjoyed the lot. Being drop off to school, being picked up, meeting new friends, you name it, as you do when your age is in single digits

Part of that thrill was being picked up in Fords back in the early 90s. A variety of them. This started out with

-2 Sierras. 1 being a new Sapphire GLS in White and black, but with the optional 5 spoke wheels, which my dad had. The other was an allegedly cut-and-shut 1983 Sierra 1.6 L.

There were other Fords, including XR3is, Escort vans etc. but GLS was the family preferred car.



The first Mondeo would arrive after the GLS was sold. The Mondeo in question was a 2.0 Si Saloon, complete with the full RS kit. In theory, I should have loved this over the Sierra. It was faster, looked better, and was a nicer colour! In State Blue, it really popped. However, while I liked it, I never gelled with it was much as the Saph.

The image below is an example of the kit.



In State Blue, an Si, with the classic looking 7 spoke diamond cut RS wheels, it should have been amazing! However, it just didn't do it for me, back in what I will say is either 1993 or 4. Maybe it was

-It not being quite new
-The Saph, my dad was talked into being sold via relatives. He needed a new car as a company car, but considering the 90,000 mile 3 year old Sierra went for £2k, only for us to get a low mileage, but very rotten 1986 Mk2 Fiesta for £1.5k seemed like a travesty. My mum was pretty annoyed at the time. I suppose then, mileage was king, even if the Sierra was well maintained.
-It seemed to have a few niggles always.

The Si would eventually go too. We would then not a Mondeo, bar a company car. A friend however, did have an ST24 in Juice Green, which was a lovely old thing. Our friends and I adored that car. Sounded lovely too, with the Mongoose exhaust.



For us, we would go through a few cars before getting a Mondeo again, from the Si Saloon that we had, which included, and were mostly new

-1996 Vauxhall Vectra 2.0 SRi - First ever car we had with AC. We loved that car, oddly.
-1996 BMW E36 325tds SE - A nice car. Not the most reliable, albeit those faults would be easy to find now. It was a lovely car to drive, that would eventually see 250,000 miles.
-2001 Vectra 2.2i SRi - That seemed quick back then
-2001 Volvo S40 1.8i SE with a Lux Pack- This would be the first car I learned to drive in, and it was the car which I'd drive about anywhere, when the Ka wasn't used
-2001 Volvo S40 2.0i SE - The replacement. That was quick
-2000 Saab 9-3 Aero 2.0T - Compared to the above, this seemed fast. Really fast! Very well built, and very quiet to drive. Not the best for putting the power down, but it certainly had a way!

Above car list is from 1996 to 2004(ish).

This brings us to around 2004. I was leaving 6th form, unsure of what I wanted to do. My dad fell on hard times in the corporate ladder, something would need to be done for him to have a car, to go to whatever employment he would take. Initially, this was a 1993 Ford Escort 1.8TD LX he bought for £250. Yup, a 9 car shitbox for 3 figures. It had no turbo, as it had an NA fuel pump fitted at some point, it transpired, but it was cheap and effective transport.

When my dad's fortunes turned around a little later that year, that is when we'd back into Mondeos again. This time a 1.8 TD GLX. He was now driving for a living.

This car would from from 150,000 miles to 250k. At this point, we sold it. We were worried the turbo was going (it was sirening in sound but was fine). Unlike now, we didn't really stick with cars and plough the cash in.

If you want to chuckle over car clocking, Google W76 UOH. Someone after we sold it was a very naughty boy! I did wonder why he expected the car to be mint. It's a 6 year car on 250k for goodness sake!

He'd then buy more Mondeos over the years.

-2001 2.0 Ghia X - 77k to 387k - I would scrap that when the diff went



-2004 2.5 Ghia X Estate Auto -



This car would be pivotal for a few reasons

-It's the first V6 I worked on
-It's the first time I realised good garages were very hard to find
-Mechanics hated working on it, or refused to, due to previous encounters with Ford V6s
-My dad and I would do way more work on cars than we ever had done, besides drop link changes, brakes and oil changes, outside of the resto projects
-The car was a dog.
-It would also be the first car I started doing the driving game in.

For those who aren't bored yet, I'll give the short story on this next time. It's probably the one reason why I had Mondeos for ages TBH.

Not once but twice, 170k first time and 25k a few years later, scary.

thoroughly enjoying this thread, looking forward to more

This car however would teach me a few things

-You can get bad cars
-Not all cars are as they seem
-Perceptions can change.
-Never let cars visage decept you.

Cryptic, I know!

As you can tell, many things went wrong with this car.

My dad bought this 2004 V6 in 2009 for £2.5k, on LPG, on 112k. The alarm bells should have been ringing then! Bar, the lacklustre performance, and terrible MPG, and copper traces around the expansion tank filler neck, and water in it,

At 140,000 miles, around 6 months later, we thought the head gasket went. It was losing water quite rapidly, and one day, a hose went, loads of steam came out and the gauge went up far too quickly. From my discovery later on with Mondeos, I would (well now), come to see why my dad didn't notice the gauge going up so fast (TLDR : the gauge is massively damped to stay in the middle).

We would give it to our garage to repair, who at this point, had been reasonable repairing things. We tried a few garages in the area over the decade, and things were never quite assembled right, which annoyed us. The garage and us decided to pull the heads off, and get the head gaskets done. This is where the horror of the car would haunt us, and explain alot of the above.

The heads were scrap. Dead. Basically, the engine had been cooked long before we got our hands on it. So much, that, besides the LPG not helping with valve seat recession, it is said the metal of the heads had gone soft, causing the seats to sink too far into the head, rendering them scrap. Joy. So we now had a dead car, a car in which my dad couldn't earn, and at a time where I wasn't earning alot.

It was also a time when V6s weren't cheap for these. After all, not many 2.5 Mondeos were made, especially in the Mk2 format. At this time, I almost wish we went with new heads, but who knows how much life the block had left, if it had been cooked hard. So we found another engine, from a breaker from Essex.



The above photo is not the Green V6. It's just put in to break up the text! I'll be doing this as I mention this boring Mondeo, but I feel I need to share the pain of this terrible, yet great car.

The garage would fit it, but it took them over 2 months to put the engine in. They then had it for another month, as they found issues with it. The coilpack that came with the engine had broken mountings, but it was fine. The one on the car was the opposite. It was broken. Genuine coilpacks for some reason were on backorder. Since we needed the car, we agreed the garage into having us take it, but with the broken coilpack. My dad was at this point, getting sick of renting car, which had their own mechanical issues.

It had problems however, when it came back from the garage

-The LPG heater hoses had been cut badly in the past, and clearly were very swollen, and had been leaking for some time
-The main radiator hose was rubbing on the water pump pulley, due to the garage hastily throwing it back together, and the fact that the LPG pipes were just crowding things around that area.

We'd reroute the LPG hoses to get around that issue, and take out the T-Piece joiners which cause so many issues on LPG conversions. This helped the cooling system. For then...

Despite this issues, my dad had the car back!

After all, drivers had them, but didn't care for them. Naturally they were quick enough to moan if the cars physically stopped moving. We eventually got the coilpack.

I'd then start driving it. On the first day I started driving for a living, it snapped the inner splines on the intermediatte shaft, before I even stat in the seat. Another one was thrown in, along with the inner CV being split apart by our mechanic for some reason, and then we were on our way.

In this time, more cooling hoses went. On top of that, I noticed something. Via the onboard menu, the car was running hot. Very hot! Even on a mild day, the car was running at 100 degrees on the motorway, all with the temp gauge at the middle!! The fans would then cut in, allow the engine to cool down, and the cycle would repeat. I had seen nothing like this before. I'd only see a similar thing to this on the Stag later on. Both had the same root cause. The radiator was blocked.

I would come to find between this car, and my second V6 that

-Temp gauge would say in the middle between 80-107 degrees C.
-110 would see the gauge move to the right. 115 would be getting you closer than you wanted to the red (i.e the limit). The latter thankfully, was on the second V6, which I only noticed as the gauge went up slowly. It was pressurised at the time, but gauge basically brought to my attention that the fan's operation was intermittent.
-The first fan stage cut in at 100 degrees
-The second stage at 105 degrees. With a decent cooling system, unless you are really pushing these cars, they don't tend to go above 105 degrees very often.

Obviously, that copper stuff I mentioned above was K-Seal. It had blocked the radiator. It's one reason why I hate the stuff. Upon removing the radiator, it had puss like stains on the front, so we knew it had to go. With the new rad, it cooled unbelievably well!

For the next two years, the car would keep on finding new coolant hoses to blow, obviously all of the ones we didn't change from before. It also had a few other problems

-The gearbox splines stripped again. This time, we'd need to rebuild the 'box. It shifted much nicer after the box was rebuilt.

-That CV I mentioned being split earlier. It started clicking like mental

-The new engine gained many oil leaks

-The PAS rack died, thanks to the wrong oil being put in.

-The 3rd cat died in the exhaust, shown by a quiet knocking at times, in addition to the engine becoming mega gutless. It also had the high speed fans occasionally cutting it. Seriously, a W124 250D auto would out-accelerate this thing! Our mechanic said the gearbox had gone tight. We then took it to the gearbox specialist. He said straight away, the 'box was fine. It was the cat. We then got the cat rodded out.

It was like another car! From barely doing 22MPG on a run, it was now doing that around town! 32 was now possible on a run. The autobox actually behaved more like you wanted to, obviously not working well before, as the engine was strangled! Like the Rotsun to Freiburger, I was now beginning to see the charm of the auto V6. It had a great character. But just like the Rotson, it would keep breaking our hearts.

However, at 281,000 miles, I grew sick of fixing this thing. I don't know how my dad had the patience to fix it almost every other week, and call the RAC crew as much as he did. It got so bad at one point, that I sold my 944 S2, just to buy a replacement/backup for the V6 going back. It seemed mad to just work on the cars. Why were we working on them? We got sick of the garages almost appearing to break the cars. Maybe because we were stuck in a rut, and my dad didn't want to spend much on a sub-5 year old car, we developed Stockholm Syndrome over this dreadful car!

That replacement would be a car I'd adore. It's not one I ever intended of adoring however. Looking back, I probably did prefer it to the S2. But more on that next time.

Really enjoying this so far, do continue!

Had a couple of saab 93’s. Pretty good cars, gear linkage went which is common, shame they gone bust the new gen Saab’s looked good.

I've decided to update this again, now things are getting quieter.

Also, because the Saab has decided to break again, and have yet more awkward to change parts. The hose in question is hose no.7, which needs the subframe to come off. What a stupid car.

.

Anyway, back to the Mondeos.

Goldie was written off. We debated buying it back, but we didn't. We figured that 4 years and 130,000 miles clocked onto it by ourselves, showed it was time to buy another car. It took a while for the insurance company to cough up the cash, and there were issues with the valuation, mainly as they could not find another V6 Mondeo Estate on LPG for sale.

So, we went newer. We both weren't driving, but it seemed like the right time to upgrade. What would we get? Another Mondeo! This time, one of the unsung cars. A very rare one.

A MkIV 2.5 Turbo Titanium Estate. Ford only made 1000 of these. Not because they were a limited edition. Mainly because no one bought them. This was meant to be a silent successor of the ST220, but considering the flop the ST220 became, it's not a surprise this car didn't get the ST treatment. I suppose big petrol engines were out.

But here are some shots of what we bought.










In 2015, £3.2k got us this ex-Met Office 125k car with a small amount of ticket

Between 2019 and 2021 I would plough in around £1k into the car. I'd also push the car to 190,000 miles. Where did the money go?

-Aux belts ; given that if these snap, it's game over for the engine, I changed both, including the awkward AC belt. Tensioner was also changed for the main belt. £70 all in. Changing this was fun as This Post outlines. It did take two belts however for me to figure this out
-Cambelt kit for the car ; This was another expense. Around £150 for the belt, tensioners, coolant and water pump
-Themostat : £30 : I wished I went genuine here, as the Mahle one was always a little off the temperature. Especially since these are a nightmare to change. But a Ford one even with discount was over £100!
-Dampers all round, including top mounts up front ; Around £170 for the lot
-2 New Goodyear Eagle F1s on the rear : £200
-Bleed off Hose broken : £50

Besides maintenance, I'd put something good in however. A factory derived bluetooth kit. This involved me getting some

-Futuba connectors, so I could go into the factory wiring with the pins
-Wiring
-A loop connector which I'd modify to work
-A Microphone : My car never had one, as it never came with a phone kit fitted ; as I said, it was an odd specification of car. It did however have a Bury kit fitted, something which I noticed police cars all tend to have fitted.
-An AT suffixed bluetooth module, complete with USB stick wiring ; an AN or later module would have been fine as well.
-A CD containing SP5.3 firmware, as well another DVD having the latest maps.

It took some trial and error, but I'd eventually have a full Bluetooth kit.

Oh, and I tried to detail the car as well: