Author: SPGViggen

In the spirit of social distancing we can do certain amount of car servicing/maintenance at home. Providing you have a private garage, driveway or a parking space you can replace cabin air filters in your SAAB. This should be done as a routine maintenance item but is particularly important now when clean and efficient ventilation system can be a life saver. The whole job takes 20 minutes, taking care not to break anything and cleaning all the components along the way. It also gives you a glimpse at how well our cars are constructed and how easy they are to service once you overcome the initial inertia and fear of the unknown. 

If you service your car at a dealer or an independent shop you may not be aware of the cabin filter problem. You may even be somewhat annoyed seeing the bill for $30.00 plus labour for something as trivial as a small filter. This is why you might consider to do this service, at least once, by yourself. During the twenty years of owning my 2000 9-3 Viggen I had the filter changed many times, most of them by myself. After seeing the filthy dirt accumulated on the filter for the first time after two years of light duty driving I developed a routine where I change the filter every second year but do a mid-term clean up with the vacuum to prolong its useful life span.

The photo of the dirty filter doesn’t really do justice as to what has accumulated on its surface. The last time I did it, the surface of the filter included crawling maggots that apparently adapted to this new, organic matter-rich environment. A wonder of nature or I am perhaps onto something? If you hear about self-cleaning filters using transgenic bugs available online you will know that my idea panned out! For now do the clean up as suggested.

The job itself is very easy and doesn’t require special tools. You need a small screwdriver to pry-off the plastic cover on the base of the wiper arm and a 13 mm socket wrench to remove the nuts holding the wiper arms themselves. All else is just careful handiwork to remove the wiper arms with a little bit of “wiggling motion” and prying out the two layers of plastic covers that are held neatly held under a rubber gaskets. The filter itself comes in a plastic frame that attaches itself to the opening above the fan motor. The assembly is the reversal of the removal (really!) and you can have your clean air in the cabin flowing back at full rate. A hint: prior to removing the wiper arms mark their position on the windshield. I stick a small piece of masking tape onto the windshield parallel to the wiper blades. This will assure easy reassembly without your wipers sweeping the A pillars.

On my 2008 Sport Combi 9-3 the job is even easier since one doesn’t need to remove the wipers. Gentle lifting of the plastic cover on the passenger side exposes sufficient space to remove the old filter and fit a new one.

Big thanks to H&H for hosting club members on March 14th. With gloomy skies over our heads and Coronavirus pandemic approaching the H&H warmly welcomed the SAAB club members and introduced them to the available service options. As can be seen on their outside sign H&H work on SAABs along with many other car makes. Their partner at the same location offers affordable tire service. Some of the long-term customers vouched for the dedication of H&H to SAAB mark.

Although Ontario car insurance rates have gone down slightly the basic coverage is still a big-ticket item that hurts everyone’s budget. It is particularly painful to pay yearly rates on the order of $1,000 (without collision) for a car that may be worth 2-3K total. This used to be the case for my 1991 SPG around a year ago when I got to talk to one of our fellow Club members who owns 900 convertible of similar vintage.
Hagerty Insurance is an American Company that has been a long time supporter and sponsor of SAAB Owner’s Conventions in the US and I contacted their website about insuring my SPG since my friend with the convertible was already getting coverage from them. My projected rates produced by the automated website calculator were less than one third of what I was paying so I gave them a call and confirmed the estimate. One point of uncertainty was the $ value of my SPG. Hagerty has no posted tables for SAABs and I had to basically come up with a figure on my own. Since my SPG is in pretty good condition and has a relatively low kilometer reading for a 26 year old car I gave it a conservative $3,500CAN and the company agreed. SPGs are getting rare and 1991s (last year of production) are least common. There were only 254 1991 SPGs sold in the US, 40 of them in Talladega Red. There are only 20 1991 SPGs listed on the current registry at The SAAB Network, three in red. http://www.saabnet.com/tsn/faq/spgreg/
In fact Hagerty suggested a higher value, but I explained to them that although our SAABs are becoming collector items they are still relatively inexpensive and the demand is low. I should add that the company representatives answering the phones are all very polite and helpful. What’s even more amazing that in my experience there are no long waiting times at their telephone desk. What a difference between this company and some of the other “service” providers we have in Canada!
Encouraged by my initial experience I further inquired whether I could insure my 2000 Viggen in the same way. Indeed I could and the only reason I haven’t so far is that I use my Viggen for summer driving at approximately 6,000km per year. This turned out to be too much for granting me the amazingly low rates by Hagerty. I suspect lowering my yearly km to 3,000-4,000km will do the trick and I may revisit the matter next year. Why is Viggen eligible? It is due to the relatively low production numbers of 3,000 vehicles per model year. Certain versions of Viggens such as yellow 5-doors are exceedingly rare. So it appears you don’t need an antique car to insure with Hagerty. Instead you can insure your perfectly drivable, but still rare SAAB as long as you don’t plan on driving much more than a few thousand kilometers per year. This insurance may not be suitable for everybody but for some SAAB aficionados who own more than one vehicle Hagerty may provide an alternative.

 

We had fantastic weather and a smooth drive to Oshawa for this event. Six SAABs and an SUV arrived at the IKEA meeting place for breakfast. Two of our participants realized there was a rare opportunity to ride along in a classic SAAB and the number of vehicles was reduced to 4!!

Here are a couple of photos showing vehicles outside and inside the Museum. In the process we managed to educate the tour guide on the relevance of SAAB mark to the Canadian automotive scene.

Big thanks to Fred for organizing this event.