[highlander]

hi, I ghave recently bought myself a very nice manual 9000 CDE 2.3turbo (91H). It is a beautiful car & I can only praise it's previous 2 owners for taking such good care of it. Anyway, a few questions to people who know a lot more than me...
I was going to ask about oil....
spark plugs, am I right in thinking dealer only or are there recommedations?
What's with this direct ignition???
I would appreciate any tips on general sevicing, I know my way round normal engines...but this...hmmmm!
Finally, in the short space of time I have owned this fine car, I have noticed the boost doesn't seem as pronounced, gauge still shows same pressure, no smoke or scary noises from turbo.I was wondering, air flow blockage or fuel system prob...it seems a little off on tickover.

Many thanks for any help you may be able to provide...and am I right in thinking joining the saab owners club would be very wise?

 

[highlander]

one other question, any good independant saab garages around Derby?

 

[gassy]

Can't comment on the technical stuff, other than to say my '91 2.3Turbo has slightly lumpy tickover also.

Re SAAB Owners Club. IMHO it's worth it if only for the magazine & socialising. The Q&A on their website isn't as good as this though, but you do have free access to a SAAB master technician.

 

[zeppelin]

first off plugs,champion rc7ycc4....halfords etc.direct injection ok for,in my case 150,000.mls if car starts missfiring or dies on you, look there first. cannot be fixed must be renewed.best cars on the road; welcome to the club.... p.s. d.i.approx 140 squid.

 

[Paul D]

Direct Ignition (DI) is a smart Saab design, especially know that Saab have 'aledgidly' fixed the common failure problem which occured anywhere between 40k and 120k miles.

Basically, the feed to the DI pack through the loom and connector is 12v! The DI pack steps the voltage up via coil and capacitor to 40K volts! Hence the plug gap should be set to 1mm, giving a powerful spark which ensures better mixture burning. Also plug life is increased to 24k miles!

But it gets smarter:
When you turn engine off, or when the car fails to start, the DI pack fires of 1000 times (distributed across all four spark plugs), hence burning off soot from the plugs and keeping them clean!

And smarter still:
When your turn the engine over the engine does not know which cylinder is ready to fire (i.e. comming up on it's compression stroke). So the ECU (Engine Managment Unit) applies a voltage across all four plugs via the DI pack, and measures the resistance (i.e. via the amount of current flow through each plug) across each plug gap. It then detects after the first revolution of the crank shaft which cylinder is ready to fire and from that point establishes the firing order based on the standard spark plug pattern of cylinder numbers 1-3-4-2.

And now that you can buy a new one from a non-franchised dealer for £130, they are much cheaper than the £300+ price charged on earlier Saabs.

 

[highlander]

thanks for the info guys, much appreciate it.