It is my friends 900. Classic Swedish design with all of the joys of having to order every individual part.
The thing has a B201, which I realized can actually be bought in some new Chinese cars, but my friend wanted to keep it as original as possible (late dad's car) and some of the shops straight-up refused to work on it. I, naively, thought it would be fun and easy, so I agreed to do it. After looking it up and seeing how hard it would be and after ordering all of the necessary parts, I started after a few months. I have since grown to love them, but I don't think I will be so enthusiastic next time.
these engines aren't too bad to work on for access, and they were fitted to so many things that parts are easy to come by in most cases
It isn't that hard to access, its just all of the things I'm having to find/learn for the first time, as I'm not that familiar with the B engines. The parts has been the problem, because there are so many Saab/GM enthusiasts near me (for obvious reasons) that they are like hounds when it comes to parts. I thought I could just walk in to a parts shop and they would have it. I ended up ordering almost everything from esaabparts and other specialty Saab part websites, which wasn't too bad for pricing/shipping. I should have realized that I live in probably the biggest Saab community outside of Trollhättan
there's not much of a saab community here, but parts can be found, they just tend to come with more parts attached i recall my grandad having to buy a whole engine just to get one part for his 99
I mean here there is only a community because of GM family discounts/dealer discounts, but it still exists. And they are nuts when it comes to their cars. Just curious, do you know what part it was that your granddad needed?
A clutch slave cylinder would be a niche part to get. But yeah, I can imagine how hard it would have been to get those back in the day. Funnily enough, it probably is easier to get them now, even with Saab gone, because of Orio.
Orio is the OEM parts department, which didn't get sold to NEVS and was retained by the Swedish government. They have like a weird dealer turned certified repair thing going on.
Believe it or not, it isn't old stock, they still make OEM parts for cars which haven't even been in production for the last 16 years. Just goes to show how big and niche of a community there is.
