9-3 Aero woes

• My wife only drives automatics
• I'm attracted to new technology (7 speed semi automatic to quote the brochure " Two extra intermediate gears permit faster acceleration in automatic mode and provides even sportier driving." sold me.
• The Audi or the BMW M3 automatics do not have this problem.

My beef is Saab should not have ruined an otherwise good car with the "Sentronic +2" box.

Interesting information. How does it spin down so quickly - a brake of some type? You can't ignore the laws of physics - once a body is in motion it tends to stay in motion. A spinning turbo at full boost is a not a minor amount of centifugal motion.

Not that I would highly recommend it, but you could eliminate this turbo spin down by not taking your foot off the gas. There are some people, professional truck drivers, who never use the clutch after they get the vehicle moving from a dead stop. These drivers drive hundreds of thousands of miles a year and their rigs are worth over $100K, so I would think they would not take any chances on abusing their transmission.

But wrong. He has posted this misinformation previously instead of fixing whetever it is that is wrong with his engine.

No brake. There is a bypass valve that opens to connect the pressure tube, between the output side of the turbo and the throttle, to the inlet side of the turbo. This keeps the air circulating through the turbo preventing it to stop. If the bypass valve does not open (broken or the control hose has been disconnected) then the air pressure builds up between the turbo output and the closed throttle plate. This will cause a turbo stall. Every manufacturer of turbo charged engines will do whatever is needed to keep the turbo spinning. Adding a brake to spin down the turbo is not something they will waste money on.

True. When the turbo is stopped, due to the shock wave from the air that was unable to go into the engine due to the closed throttle, there is a high probability that the turbo is damaged.

G=F6ran, I would dearly love to fix whatever is wrong. That's why I keep posting the info, to either warn others of the behavior, or find someone who KNOWS what is wrong and can tell me how to fix it.

I have been told roughly the same thing by two different dealers. I have tried replacing the bypass valve with a high-performance version, and saw no change. I have test-driven other 2002 9-5 Aeros (only automatics, unfortunately) and saw the same behavior. This all seems to indicate that this is just the way the car works. Maybe the European models don't, but the US model sure seems to.

If you have some idea what IS wrong, I'd love to hear it. If all you can say is that what I'm seeing isn't true, that's not very helpful.

You would certainly think so. After all, it takes 2 seconds to spin UP when I'm stomping on the gas, so I have no idea why it stops so quickly when I let up. But it does. And in 2.5 years and several mechanics looking at it, nobody has been able to tell me what, if anything, was wrong.

Gary

I do believe you are right about the gearbox. I have a 9-3 ARC (210hp) with a 5 speed Sentronic. I can comfortably do 0-60 in 7.5 seconds (book says 6.8s). 40-70 is a breeze, fast enough that I have never bothered with the "semi-manual". I sometimes drive on a coastal road with plenty of twists and turns where the manual comes in handy and almost always I find myself tail-gating the car in front . I am yet to find some one on my tail.

The tramline problem is not very noticeable on the 16" wheels, though I feel it when road is really bad. I have driven a friend's M3 which was a dog to keep in line when driving on grooved tarmac. So I guess tramline also plagues the 'ultimate driving machine'!

Why, oh, why would anyone buy a Saab with auto?

Why would anyone who buys an auto trans complain about performance?

Malcolm

Why not? If you are driving in a heavily congested metropolitan area it is far more convenient to drive an automatic.

I hate to burst your bubble, but a SAAB is not exactly a "Performance" auto. I don't see the big deal for why one *has* to be had with a manual.

Incidentally, I think the SAAB implementation of a manual transmission is among the poorest I have driven, specifically the NG900s and 9-3s. The pedals (clutch and brake) are too close together and offset toward the center of the car such that one has to sit skewed in the drivers seat to operate them. The shifters are pure garbage, even when new. Floppy, vague, blah.

OTOH, the auto transmissions used in SAABs are pretty much status quo for all euro sedans. Contrary to all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about them, they are actually quite reliable and provide reasonable performance. One advantage of an automatic when coupled with a turbo engine is that once you get the boost up you can just keep your right foot into it and never have to come down off boost to shift.

In all of the newer SAABs the boost gets dumped as soon as it senses the clutch being depressed. Plus there is a programmed lag in the fly-by-wire accelerator which is intended to produce lower emissions. It makes shifting one of these cars during spirited acceleration a jerky affair.

Perfomance is primarily a measure of the engine (acceleration) and suspension (handling), not so much the transmission. But I have no evidence that suggests that performance suffers when the same engine is coupled to an automatic.

-Fred W

PS - 3 of my 6 current cars have manual transmissions.

Malcolm Its obvious from your comments that you have never driven a performance car with an autobox. If ever you get the chance try a M3 BMW with the autobox or for the ultimate autobox try the new Golf GTi with the twin clutch. I've driven the Golf and that's going to be my next car.

Luton_lad

Key phrase "once you get the boost up". Pulling out in a turbo automatic is the problem. Once you are moving, they are fine. But , it's the reason I would never buy a turbo auto anything - unless it was a high performance motor with plenty of NA power with the turbo there for super performance reasons.

My experience is that the boost comes up plenty fast enough in that situation, and if you are looking to hot-dog (or drag race) you could just two-foot the launch and have full power instantly, though I would not suggest that on a regular basis for obvious reasons...

Opinions can certainly vary on this as ours do, but mine is that the (later versions of the) SAAB Turbo engines are actually *more* suitable to an automatic transmission, which may be one of the reasons that I have become somewhat disenfranchised with the brand these days.

I really wanted to like the NG SAABs. Especially the 2000 9-3SE CV (5-speed) that I bought last winter to have as a weekend fun car, but even after doing some suspension mods I ended up selling it off (at a tidy profit I might mention) and going for a 2-seater BMW Z3 instead.

Don't get me wrong. I am not anti-SAAB in general. One of the favorite cars that I have ever owned was my '90 900 (NA, 5-speed). I also have both of my daughters driving SAABs. A '93 9000CSE Auto and a '98 900SE 5-speed. The post GM cars, while nice, are just not the same driving experience as the classic 900s or the 9000s.

-Fred W

I once drove a Volvo 740 Turbo automatic, night and day difference between it and my almost identical 740T manual. Also drove a VW Golf TDI automatic, very similar experience. Mash the pedal frantically to pull out into traffic, then finally it takes off like a rocket, but by that time I'm already up to speed. There's a little bit of lag with a manual but with the newer slightly smaller turbos it's almost non existant.

I think the fallacy here is that Saabs would have remained the same if GM hadn't taken over. While they might be a little more sport oriented, for Saab to survive they had to move to a marketing approach that bites a bigger share - that's not the Saab cult market. I'd like to be able to buy a '67 Alfa Romeo new but I think that leaves me in a small market segment and Alfa doesn't make the same cars either.

As to the automatic - you are right, it's a matter of opinion. I find that a tweaked NG900 5 speed is fine to drive. But, I would not drive one with an auto. Maybe in the country where the "quick pull across traffic lanes from a stop" is not needed but not anywhere more populated. I have nothing against automatics - but I like them hooked to an engine with a lot of NA torque.

Bob

This got me thinking: what alternatives would there have been if GM hadn't bought into Saab? Would ownership by any other American/ European/ Japanese group have been more benign? The development costs for new cars are now so great that it's unlikely that Saab would have continued as a true independent; the only example of a small independent volume car maker I can think of is Rover, which since BMW sold it has been troubled by a string of boardroom scandals and failed joint ventures. But what other sorts of alliances, apart from outright ownership, with a large manufacturer might have been possible for Saab?

Martin