900 Classic tailgate breakaway - Any ideas?

It is relatively easy, certainly on a 3 or 5 door like yours. It this case you can take out the entire roof element through the back door, in a sedan the rear window has to come out.

There is a description of this DIY job on one of the SAAB sites, I cannot find that one right now, maybe someone else has it at hand..

-------- MH '72 97 '77 96 '78 95 '79 96 '87 900T8

Your best bet will be to find someone who has a MIG welder and cut out the rusted metal and weld in a new piece, that is if you can find a similar car in a wrecker that isn't rusted in the same place.

I've never seen this, and I've seen a lot of 900s. The simple fix is to weld on another one. I wouldn't bother with the screw idea - it won't work.

It's quite easy, but budget on a whole day to do it.

If anyone was involved it might have been >mr< Guillotine...

------- MH '72 97 '77 96 '78 95 '79 96 '87 900T8

Yeah, seems to be unusual on SAABs. This happened to my wifes fiesta, except the break was on the tailgate. Therefore for £20 she ended up driving a mint green fiesta with a purple tailgate......until I bought her a 900S...:-))

The screw Idea did work, although I only regard it a as a temporary fix....

Got the roof panel out, scraped off much of the foam before I realised the panel seems to be compressed rockwool, (Like insulation in your loft, attic)

Needless to say I have some serious scratching to do!

I have sprayed the passenger side with a UPVA glue/water mix to settle the problem, will look into getting the material for it this week. I'll keep you posted if you're interested.

Thanks for the advice so far guys, shame the group is so poorly supported.

Cheers

Al

Fiesta tailgate maybe 1/3 the weight of a 900 tailgate.

What do you mean?? There's a bunch of very regular regulars on here, and very good s/noise ratio.

It is a good group, but I am surprised at the lack of support considering that saab owners have always banded together, and there are actually an awful lot of us!!!

Fiesta tailgate is very much lighter than my 900, however the screw thing has worked for now as a temporary fix. I may or may not go for a more permanent solution if I keep this 900 longer than another 3 months.

Al

Bits of paper are all well and good, but the kind of engineer I want is one who can fix my landrover 500miles out into the Sahara with only a screwdriver and a ball of string.....

It's noticeably quieter here than on the Volvo group, but people here seem just as helpful and there isn't much silly bickering.

in article X7N0c.432242$I06.4899562@attbi_s01, James Sweet at snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com wrote on 01/03/2004 20:35:

The forum scene is well populated and there's more of a "community" feel there. Saab Central and Saab Scene both seem to have a good international spread of subscribers.

There are pros and cons to posting here against posting on a forum board, but I'm not sure I could tell you what they are. Suffice to say, I've learned which gives a better response for which problem and I've been pleased to share things I've picked up on both Usenet and the forum boards.

This is a great group, but there's nothing particularly wrong with my Saab at the moment and nothing really in the pipeline, so I don't tend to post here very often. I keep an eye out for topics that I can contribute something meaningful to; the forum boards provide perhaps a more "community" feel than here. Maybe something that should change.

Having said that, we've had a damn good chin wag about all sorts of non-Saab related here :)

Paul