I have a 900i from 1990, with an 8 valve 2 litre engine (B2012i). It has some 125,000 miles (200,000 km) on the meter, and is still going strong (110 hp).

I have a small (?) problem or two, though: It is, when engine has not been started for several hours, almost impossible to start it. This problem has been getting more pronounced for the past 8 months, and for the latest 4-5 months the only way to start up without being ridicouled has been this procedure:
STEP 1: Turn the key just enough to make the fuel-pump pump (- the initial 1-2 second, it switches off again automatically when no attempts are being made to start the engine);
STEP 2: Turn the key back to off, now start the engine by turning it all the way and thus allow the starter-engine to work. Succes is garantied!

Along with this annoying problem, the idle works unevenly when engine is warm. When starting up the cold engine, idle works smoothly for the initial 1½ minut, then it seems to loose RPM and starts to work unevenly, shaking the car intermittently.

At times I furthermore finds my SAAB without power, not responding significantly to the gas-pedal, when taking of right after having started the cold engine. This ”inhibition” vanishes away after 200 yards of driving.

In an atempt to fix things here, I recently cleaned throttle valve, checked the almost new air-filter, and checked and greased vacumm-hoses/-tubings at inlet/joints/fittings (- no cracks found). I furthermore applied ”carburettor-alcohol” (isopropanol) to the fuel (½ a litre for 20 litres of gas) in case all symptoms were caused by water condensed in the fuel-tank. NONE of all these smart-fixes changed the performance of my otherwise fabulous SAAB.

Could it be the fuel-pump needing replacement, or is there a valve between fuel-pump and engine, that when faulty could cause these symptoms??

Anyone out there having experienced similar problems and knowing of how to fix it??

Mike M, Denmark

Oddly enough there is a valve called start valve (at least there is on my '86 900) which lets extra feul into the combustion chamber when starting the car, it is pretty easy to check, just pull it out, put it in a pan, and when the car is cold, check to see if fuel is expelled upon starting the car. (don't blow yourself or car up) As for the rough idling my car sometimes does this as well, I'm not sure what the problem is, there are lots of parts in the feul injection that could be causing this, I plan to check all of them eventually.
josh