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.
