Update: went to the junkyard today and pulled the manual trans and most of the parts I need for a manual swap! Big thank you to @dat_saab for his help all day in the heat. To see more about it, go check out my Instagram at @auto.autopsy. Enjoy the video!
The thing I love about this video is how you fall in love with it as you go. Starts of as a just-around-the-block and ends with you being like "just one more mile..."
Very exciting progress! You're right, the driving experience on an 80's/early 90's 900 is like no other Saab or other car for that matter. My '83 900 Turbo was a 5spd, but I drove an automatic once and the shifting sounded clunky like that. Glad you pulled the 5spd as a swap will significantly enhance the performance. 👍
Jacob, radio needs to have power to it for a number of hours , then it will auto reset, each time you input an incorrect code after 3 incorrect attempts the time doubles, so its anybody's guess, so put the fuse back in whilst its stood with the battery connected (keys out) and it will eat up that time, I'm guessing it's an old school clarion or similar.....I'm old enough to remember them when they were new unfortunately 🤦♂️.....
FYI All C900s have an oil leak, either a small one or a huge one lol. My SPG was consuming 1 qt every 100 miles before the fuel pump died and I began restoring it. Glad to see you in a C900 tho!
About the seat height, on my 900 there is a lever under the seat to drop the height even lower and I fit really well while being 6'8. You can also remove the middle compartment under the dash completely to open up the footwell between the driver and passenger side for even more space.
Back in the 80s first car I had was a 85 99ea had that car for 20 years only big problem was the nutrial safety switch went bad ended up selling it for what I paid for it keep up the good work
Nice. I bought a 1991 900 Turbo S 16v with the red box 175hp APC controller last year here in the U.K. It was sat on the owners drive for 18 years! I got it running but decided to shoot it on as I only paid £400 for the whole thing! Lovely car though, quite long in the flesh.
Kudos on the maiden voyage, you've found an interesting 'grocery getter' The damage to the moonroof liner was probably a result of the high seating position & hair products from the 80's!😁👍
Great Car! I had the four door 5 speed manual non turbo for a while. The aerodynamics are so good the car would cruise effortlessly at 140 kilometers per hour with only 129 hp. Don't know if you will read this but the speedo cable can be regreased with graphite grease. Worth doing if the outer cable is in good condition. I put the same aero wheels on the car that you got from the wreckers. The 1/2 inch extra width really improved cornering as I had the 5 & 1/2 inch steel wheels originally. When you push this car hard through the corners it hardly understeers. This is because of the equal length drive shafts. A fantastic idea that died after 1993-4. You're better off with the auto because the manuals are prone to the second gear synchro failing. You could install a high stall tourque converter. That will help it along a little! Cheers from Downunder.
Thanks for the video. Great to see your enthusiasm on car discoveries. I'm a bit jealous 😃. My first car was a Mercedes Benz 190SL I purchased for $200 and had towed to parents house. Worked on it for an entire summer, three gallons of Bondo and chicken wire. When I finally did drive it I wanted to shout it from the highest mountain top of how great this car was but alas no TH-cam and I was just another baby boomer doing goofy things. Great life that I can share in your adventure via TH-cam. Keep up the great video production. I got to your video via your review of the 9-3 convertible. Good clean review. Saw one for sale and after your review I can say it's not for me. The dash and control panel are "GM" inspired. Seeing your 900 is a great reminder of why I love the design of the older Saabs.
My first Saab (new) was a 1986 C9OO Base Model w/ 5-speed manual, 8-valve engine with all of 110 horsepower! Loved it! Had it for 20 years before I sold it. What's the status on the Audi body work?
Not sure about the speedo, but if it's cable driven you might want to pull and lube it. My 96 was doing the jumpy thing like yours and lubing the cable fixed the issue. Love watching this classic 900 come back to life.
Clean or replace the idle control valve and/or look for rotted vacuum line. The idle control vale on every 900 that I have had gets dirty and prevents a smooth idle.
Great vid and great maiden voyage. I miss my classic, it was the closest thing to driving the Batmobile! My '93 was 3spd auto too and thumped when shifting, think yours is ok💯🙌🏼
In regards to your seats, use coconut butter from the grocery store, 2 Bucks here in Australia comes in a jar and leave in the fridge. It becomes like a paste and use generously with a soft sponge and like waxing in circular motion into all the leather. Let it dry and you will have soft refreshed leather. From then on apply every couple of months. You wont regret it. My brother bought used leather seats for his golf and had a large patch which was dried out and hard as, after one application it worked wonders. Also smells good. Trani might be low on oil due to leaks which once fixed will/should improve you gear changes.
one important thing if you havent checked it already. if you dont know where this saab went, then its best to remove the black panels that are holding the carpet on the frame where you jack up the car under it. in my 900 there is rust everywhere. those places wherent that good protected against moisture and if they start to rust, they are very hard to fix. if you dont have an endoscope, take a lamp and place it on one screw hole and look through a second that is close by. you wont see much, but if you see paint its usualy ok and not much to worry... yet!
FYI I am a 2011 9-3 owner. There are 2 9-3s at my local pull a part. A 2008 and an 06 I believe. let me know if u need anything. I’ll be glad to run up there and grab something for you I don’t know how often nine threes pop up in your area
Very big progress with the project! I did not expect that you would drive your car onto the road so quickly! Well done! 👍🏻😀 Difference from driving between Saab 900 and Saab 9-3? Where is more convenient, more comfortable, cooler?
Sounds awesome, great to see you taking it for a test drive. Looked like you didn't want to take it back home again you was enjoying it so much lol. Can't wait to see how the work goes. Oh yea, keep the ignition on for a hour for the radio to reset . Cus you've entered the wrong code your locked out for a hour.
The first issue is she's a saab brother lol, just finished the street build on my 9-3 2.0t wagon I told you about on ig. Needed new turbo new coils ecu ecu clone and re tune amongst a million other small things like MAF sensor. Jk jo they aren't bad but when they take a crap they still do. Awesome car man
With my old Lucas Ignition my 900 sometimes struggled to keep idle stable aswell, mostly if i suddenly went off from the gas pedal. in that case i usualy tried to keep up the rev. a little bit. My iginition was pretty messy, but my trionic saved me from alot of trouble.
@@AutoAutopsy the problem is, that i am more familiar with the lucas system, not with the bosch system (which is better in my opinion). but what i figured out about my system, before i changed it to T5.5 is that i had severell issiues. -air mass meter was a bit dirty -idle valve had a little bit corroded wire that didnt always had good contact -the distributor had a faulty hall sensor (which sometimes fucked up my ignition under half pushed throttle) -coolant sensor had a coroded wire after i fixed some of the problems it was indeed better, the last problems i had was that the didnt wanted to start again if the engine was warm, the fuel mixture was sometimes pretty rich. but because i already planned to switch to trionic anyway, i took the lucas apart and storaged it. little tip from my side, if you wanna do a faster conversion to a trionic system, try to get the parts from a SAAB 9000 from between 1990 and 1993. this is where the Trionic 5.3 was used. T5.5 or even T7 are better than T5.3 but at least you dont have to change something within the ECU IF youre lucky and the even the T5.3 is better than the standard Bosch Injection System anyway. But if you wanna mess with the ECU and get T5.5 there are good places to do that, also if you need the ECU-Software, i can help aswell
Manuel 5 speed is the way to go...the 3speed auto revs too much at top end...they went to a 4 speed then 5speed and maybe then a 6 speed auto....enter code but...if u make a mistake the radio locks out for a day
That was fun! Looking forward to all content on that car. It will be interesting to see if the new instrument cluster you got from the junkyard fixes the issues. Thanks for posting 👍 P.S Restored 900s go like hotcakes in NY😊
Hey! I walked out of the bank and found a five speed 1992 900 turbo. The nice old lady driving said she would let me purchase when it breaks down and gave me her number!
Are you sure you want to put it out there that you drove a three speed, 1980's slushbox - chick car to the grocery store? Dude, Image is everything! Hopefully the radio will not be stuck on a infinite Madonna-Janet Jackson-Paula Abdul-ABBA loop. Dude, if the material girls see you loading up all that cargo space with groceries you are soooo done for! You will have to beat them off with a big stick and then try to outrun their Toyotas and Subarus to find a safe space. You could have another 150K miles left on that thing! The material girls might make you sensibly drive them around in it for another 15 years!
Update: went to the junkyard today and pulled the manual trans and most of the parts I need for a manual swap! Big thank you to @dat_saab for his help all day in the heat.
To see more about it, go check out my Instagram at @auto.autopsy. Enjoy the video!
The thing I love about this video is how you fall in love with it as you go. Starts of as a just-around-the-block and ends with you being like "just one more mile..."
hahaha you aren't wrong!
Very exciting progress! You're right, the driving experience on an 80's/early 90's 900 is like no other Saab or other car for that matter. My '83 900 Turbo was a 5spd, but I drove an automatic once and the shifting sounded clunky like that. Glad you pulled the 5spd as a swap will significantly enhance the performance. 👍
Awesome! I hope so. We shall see 🙌🏼
Jacob, radio needs to have power to it for a number of hours , then it will auto reset, each time you input an incorrect code after 3 incorrect attempts the time doubles, so its anybody's guess, so put the fuse back in whilst its stood with the battery connected (keys out) and it will eat up that time, I'm guessing it's an old school clarion or similar.....I'm old enough to remember them when they were new unfortunately 🤦♂️.....
Thanks! I since got it sorted out
FYI All C900s have an oil leak, either a small one or a huge one lol. My SPG was consuming 1 qt every 100 miles before the fuel pump died and I began restoring it. Glad to see you in a C900 tho!
lol wow!
That's how you know where to park!
The addiction of a great Saab! Thanks for sharing this trip down memory lane.
:)
Nothing wrong with the speedo . It's just happy to be used again and it's excited 🤣👍.
haha
Needs factory 3 spoke wheels, the ones on your car are a pain to clean! I scrapped 12 of them last yr.
Check my junkyard video that I uploaded before this lol
My son a 900 as a project car. I took to out for a drive. I was not prepared for how well that car felt to drive. Very impressed.
:)
Really love that driving position, can’t find it anymore in nowadays cars.
yeah, agreed!
you have to hold down the band button for like a few seconds to reset the display so that you can reenter the radio code
That's right. This is the reset.
@@Blutnase I remember that from my old Saab 900 S!
Thanks! I got it sorted now :)
I did most my interstate adventure trips w/ 900’s it is so fun! Closest thing to riding a motorcycle just for the fun of it.
awesome
It's great to see you enjoying the 900T!!!
Thank you :)
About the seat height, on my 900 there is a lever under the seat to drop the height even lower and I fit really well while being 6'8. You can also remove the middle compartment under the dash completely to open up the footwell between the driver and passenger side for even more space.
oh wow okay; thank you! didn't know that!
Back in the 80s first car I had was a 85 99ea had that car for 20 years only big problem was the nutrial safety switch went bad ended up selling it for what I paid for it keep up the good work
Thanks 🙏🏼
Congratulations for the finished project!!
Thanks, it is not anywhere close to finished though
Nice. I bought a 1991 900 Turbo S 16v with the red box 175hp APC controller last year here in the U.K. It was sat on the owners drive for 18 years! I got it running but decided to shoot it on as I only paid £400 for the whole thing! Lovely car though, quite long in the flesh.
wow that's a steal!
Kudos on the maiden voyage, you've found an interesting 'grocery getter'
The damage to the moonroof liner was probably a result of the high seating position & hair products from the 80's!😁👍
I wonder if it is hahaha
Great Car! I had the four door 5 speed manual non turbo for a while. The aerodynamics are so good the car would cruise effortlessly at 140 kilometers per hour with only 129 hp. Don't know if you will read this but the speedo cable can be regreased with graphite grease. Worth doing if the outer cable is in good condition. I put the same aero wheels on the car that you got from the wreckers. The 1/2 inch extra width really improved cornering as I had the 5 & 1/2 inch steel wheels originally. When you push this car hard through the corners it hardly understeers. This is because of the equal length drive shafts. A fantastic idea that died after 1993-4. You're better off with the auto because the manuals are prone to the second gear synchro failing. You could install a high stall tourque converter. That will help it along a little! Cheers from Downunder.
thanks for the advice and info!
The headliner looks new. Not sagging or falling apart either.
yep there's a couple imperfections but not bad overall!
Thanks for the video. Great to see your enthusiasm on car discoveries. I'm a bit jealous 😃. My first car was a Mercedes Benz 190SL I purchased for $200 and had towed to parents house. Worked on it for an entire summer, three gallons of Bondo and chicken wire. When I finally did drive it I wanted to shout it from the highest mountain top of how great this car was but alas no TH-cam and I was just another baby boomer doing goofy things. Great life that I can share in your adventure via TH-cam. Keep up the great video production. I got to your video via your review of the 9-3 convertible. Good clean review. Saw one for sale and after your review I can say it's not for me. The dash and control panel are "GM" inspired. Seeing your 900 is a great reminder of why I love the design of the older Saabs.
Thanks! I appreciate the support
I used to have the 1988 900S. Looking forward to your journey with this car.
Thank you!
My first Saab (new) was a 1986 C9OO Base Model w/ 5-speed manual, 8-valve engine with all of 110 horsepower! Loved it! Had it for 20 years before I sold it. What's the status on the Audi body work?
Awesome. I just got the Audi back. I’ll have a video going up very soon talking about what happened
Not sure about the speedo, but if it's cable driven you might want to pull and lube it. My 96 was doing the jumpy thing like yours and lubing the cable fixed the issue. Love watching this classic 900 come back to life.
thank you!
Clean or replace the idle control valve and/or look for rotted vacuum line. The idle control vale on every 900 that I have had gets dirty and prevents a smooth idle.
Thanks for the tip
Glad to see you so tickled about your c900.
And the sound, yes, nothing burbles like one.
:)
Great vid and great maiden voyage. I miss my classic, it was the closest thing to driving the Batmobile!
My '93 was 3spd auto too and thumped when shifting, think yours is ok💯🙌🏼
😁👍🏼
In regards to your seats, use coconut butter from the grocery store, 2 Bucks here in Australia comes in a jar and leave in the fridge. It becomes like a paste and use generously with a soft sponge and like waxing in circular motion into all the leather. Let it dry and you will have soft refreshed leather. From then on apply every couple of months. You wont regret it.
My brother bought used leather seats for his golf and had a large patch which was dried out and hard as, after one application it worked wonders. Also smells good.
Trani might be low on oil due to leaks which once fixed will/should improve you gear changes.
wow okay, didn't know that. thanks for the advice
your clear for takeoff GOD SPEED! forever
🙌🏼
one important thing if you havent checked it already. if you dont know where this saab went, then its best to remove the black panels that are holding the carpet on the frame where you jack up the car under it. in my 900 there is rust everywhere. those places wherent that good protected against moisture and if they start to rust, they are very hard to fix. if you dont have an endoscope, take a lamp and place it on one screw hole and look through a second that is close by. you wont see much, but if you see paint its usualy ok and not much to worry... yet!
thanks for sharing! this thing is rust free and im lucky for that
FYI I am a 2011 9-3 owner. There are 2 9-3s at my local pull a part. A 2008 and an 06 I believe. let me know if u need anything. I’ll be glad to run up there and grab something for you I don’t know how often nine threes pop up in your area
thank you :) they show up every now and then but thankfully i am not in need of anything right now
NEVER thought I'd see you buy a Classic 900...Congtrats!! Convert it to a manual!!
That’s the plan 🙌🏼
That's actually a really nice Cruise down the road with ur dog kinda of car..I like it needs some TLC but works fine!
lol thanks
That's sweet! I've always wondered if you would end up with a 900. It's my favorite. Can't wait for more 900 content.
thank you :)
Oh, that turbo sound! Nothing like it.
:)
Very big progress with the project! I did not expect that you would drive your car onto the road so quickly! Well done! 👍🏻😀 Difference from driving between Saab 900 and Saab 9-3? Where is more convenient, more comfortable, cooler?
thanks; plenty of work still to be done. they are so different. it is like comparing apples to oranges!
Sounds awesome, great to see you taking it for a test drive. Looked like you didn't want to take it back home again you was enjoying it so much lol. Can't wait to see how the work goes. Oh yea, keep the ignition on for a hour for the radio to reset . Cus you've entered the wrong code your locked out for a hour.
lol yep! thanks for the heads up with the radio; it has since been sorted out :)
The first issue is she's a saab brother lol, just finished the street build on my 9-3 2.0t wagon I told you about on ig. Needed new turbo new coils ecu ecu clone and re tune amongst a million other small things like MAF sensor. Jk jo they aren't bad but when they take a crap they still do. Awesome car man
When they take a crap they sure take a crap* lol damn I can't spell today
lol thank you!
Most likely the speedo is broken inside the housing, wen it jump up in speed it makes contact inside,
thanks
With my old Lucas Ignition my 900 sometimes struggled to keep idle stable aswell, mostly if i suddenly went off from the gas pedal. in that case i usualy tried to keep up the rev. a little bit. My iginition was pretty messy, but my trionic saved me from alot of trouble.
interesting...
@@AutoAutopsy the problem is, that i am more familiar with the lucas system, not with the bosch system (which is better in my opinion). but what i figured out about my system, before i changed it to T5.5 is that i had severell issiues.
-air mass meter was a bit dirty
-idle valve had a little bit corroded wire that didnt always had good contact
-the distributor had a faulty hall sensor (which sometimes fucked up my ignition under half pushed throttle)
-coolant sensor had a coroded wire
after i fixed some of the problems it was indeed better, the last problems i had was that the didnt wanted to start again if the engine was warm, the fuel mixture was sometimes pretty rich. but because i already planned to switch to trionic anyway, i took the lucas apart and storaged it.
little tip from my side, if you wanna do a faster conversion to a trionic system, try to get the parts from a SAAB 9000 from between 1990 and 1993. this is where the Trionic 5.3 was used. T5.5 or even T7 are better than T5.3 but at least you dont have to change something within the ECU IF youre lucky and the even the T5.3 is better than the standard Bosch Injection System anyway. But if you wanna mess with the ECU and get T5.5 there are good places to do that, also if you need the ECU-Software, i can help aswell
Congratulations dude! You actually got it to work! Unlike my 9-5 wich is still standing in a *cough* garage *cough*
oh :(
@@AutoAutopsy yeah...
My stereo was doing the same, I ended up removing the head unit and replacing it since I could never figure out the code
hm weird; i was able to find mine thankfully
Wow, already road-ready after only one week? And you even took it as far as the grocery store.😂 Love the c900 project car, looks very nice.
😅 not completely ready but at least good enough to drive
Those old turbos sounds so amazing
agreed! so unique
Supposedly it is because the turbo is sitting in a non-optimal position since the layout of engine bay didn’t allow for a better positioning.
Manuel 5 speed is the way to go...the 3speed auto revs too much at top end...they went to a 4 speed then 5speed and maybe then a 6 speed auto....enter code but...if u make a mistake the radio locks out for a day
fixed the radio!
Check that seat is really as low as it can go. My Dad was 6’3” back in the day and he fit easily.
okay, thanks! I will have to look into it more
That was fun! Looking forward to all content on that car. It will be interesting to see if the new instrument cluster you got from the junkyard fixes the issues. Thanks for posting 👍 P.S Restored 900s go like hotcakes in NY😊
Thanks! Unfortunately it looks like the cluster I got was the wrong year :(
Awesome a classic Saab...
:)
Might just be a speedometer cable
could be; unfortunately i have some other wonky gauges too though
Nooooo way man! Awesome! Quick!
haha :)
Hey! I walked out of the bank and found a five speed 1992 900 turbo. The nice old lady driving said she would let me purchase when it breaks down and gave me her number!
hahaha wow nice. that's awesome
How tall are you? I have known some tall people that owned 900’s but nobody hit the headliner.
He's 6'1. The problem is that c900s with sunroof, the ceiling is about 2 inches lower than the regular ones.
yep 6'1! :)
Are you the one selling the 9-3 Turbo-X out of Flagstaff?
haha no
@@AutoAutopsy , ok, thanks. I found a guy on-line with the posted advert and you were the only one I thought of because of your channel.
Are you sure you want to put it out there that you drove a three speed, 1980's slushbox - chick car to the grocery store? Dude, Image is everything! Hopefully the radio will not be stuck on a infinite Madonna-Janet Jackson-Paula Abdul-ABBA loop. Dude, if the material girls see you loading up all that cargo space with groceries you are soooo done for! You will have to beat them off with a big stick and then try to outrun their Toyotas and Subarus to find a safe space. You could have another 150K miles left on that thing! The material girls might make you sensibly drive them around in it for another 15 years!
i have never been so confused by a comment before lol
@@AutoAutopsy The commitment to a Classic SAAB will not disappoint. It will add clarity to your life.
That twitching speedometer means the car may suddenly blast off to Mars…
oh yeah
add some Lucas to the tranny...ur speed cable may be the issue
hmm
Where is the turbo X?
i sold it about 6 months ago.
lovely
:)
Just turn the volume all the way to off on the radio. :D
it still would beep :/ i ended up finding the code though!