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  1. #11
    Scot
    EqualOpportunity Offender
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    08 Nov 2011
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    NJ, United States
    Posts
    59
    Saab(s)
    1989 900 SPG Turbo,1993 9000 Aero Turbo, 2000 9-5 Aero, 2005 9-2x Aero, 2011 9-3 Aero Sedan Turbo4
    Quote Originally Posted by tunnanxwd View Post
    Darn, I started to chase one and the only place I got up close to one was at the Rt.22 Dealership in Lebanon. For some weird reason it had some "clown hat" imprints in the cloth seats, perhaps to cover up some other accident (by a kid), and one high mile 05 Linear which was a loaner car at Reinertsen. I then decided to focus on a 2006 Aero since it had a larger engine and turbo and 3 (count em'), whole horsepower more than the 05 Aero. But then I learned that there were only about 5 sold per state (250 total), in the whole country.

    We used to be heavy Saab country in this part of New Jersey but it fell apart pretty quickly around the mid/late 90's with Snorts and Specialist closing along with that Lebanon Dealer.


    That's so funny, I bought two Saabs new from Reinertsen in Denville! I lived in Rockaway when I was younger and they were right around the block. The asshats that completly screwed up swapping out the first/second engines was JMK in Springfield. I only used them because the place I purchased my 9-2x (and previous Saab), Princeton Sports and Spec Cars, moved more south and JMK was closer. They screwed up the second replace as well (although it was free as it was still less than a year), but the third one ("partial blow") I brought it in and they replaced an o2 sensor and said it would "run better after it was burned in", I asked how long, they said "about 800 miles"...I didn't believe them AT ALL, but I was leaving on a trip to Pittsburgh the next day to visit family. By the time we got home we had driven well over 800 and it was worse, brought it in and they said "there's something wrong with the engine, but you are now 500 miles over warranty so it's not covered". I tried everything, but Saab was in the middle of changing hands, etc, so no help from corporate asshats either. So, tree branches during the storm was my best bet. There is a guy on Rt. 46 around Parsippany selling one, same color as mine was, looked in good condition.

    Yeah, the 2006 model was much more limited, not much distribution in the US. Check the 92x forums, there's a bunch of jerkoffs in there and I stay far away from them, but there's always someone selling one in there.

    Here's a scan of the invoice from JMK, note where they say (with plenty of exclamation marks!!!) to NOT USE SYNTHETIC OIL...the topic of much controversy...but they swore up and down it was why I was "over slipping/spinning" engine bearings. Methinks it was a faulty oil pump or something that couldn't keep hot synth oil flowing at high RPMs...we'll never know.

    http://s54.beta.photobucket.com/user...Aeros.jpg.html

  2. #12
    Jeffrey
    Master SaabTech/Moderator Burnsside42's Avatar
    Join Date
    25 Oct 2010
    Location
    Point Pleasant, PA
    Posts
    1,316
    Saab(s)
    - 86' 9KT - 95' 9K Custom CS - 06' 9-3 Combi - 07' 9-7X Arc - 08' 9-3 Convertible - 08' 9-3 TurboX -
    Quote Originally Posted by Shazam View Post
    but I hear the seats are super uncomfortable.

    You heard wrong- they are blad supportless seats which offer no benifits to those over 100lbs. I like the look of the 9-2x and wouldn't mind a turbo (2006 offered very limited 2.5T STI 9-2X cars) but i can not justify scooby resale prices or th amount of rust those cars have. They are neat and practical otherwise. Just my .02
    European Motor Services, LLC - Point Pleasant, PA 18950 - www.europeanmotorsvc.com

  3. #13
    Scot
    EqualOpportunity Offender
    Join Date
    08 Nov 2011
    Location
    NJ, United States
    Posts
    59
    Saab(s)
    1989 900 SPG Turbo,1993 9000 Aero Turbo, 2000 9-5 Aero, 2005 9-2x Aero, 2011 9-3 Aero Sedan Turbo4
    I regretted buying it since the first engine blew Saab only covered half the cost (so $4,500 OOP for me), and they took a damn month to get the new engine in, learn how to install it, and get it back to me. I should have taken it to a Subaru dealer. I fully enjoyed the lightness and fast speeds, but besides the 9-7 v-8 lease, it was my worse "Saab" story since my first one in 1989. Although, the price was seriously rocking...it was the summer and no one was buying them, they priced them below Subaru and at the time I worked for an ad agency that had a sister company handling GM spots so I got employee pricing on top of the discount. Brand new with a 5-year-old-used pricetag!

  4. #14
    Saab Addict
    Join Date
    10 Mar 2011
    Location
    new jersey usa
    Posts
    832
    Saab(s)
    08/280/xwd & 09/210/xwd
    What I' starting to read here is that the demise of Saab in our NJ?PA area was due to the fault of the dealers and shaky practices.

    In a few short years a smummary:

    Beans quotes a low price on paper but when I get back to the dealer I note it's the wrong color and wrong options but the price is still $2,000 lower than any NJ car, it was quoted as full price but In weeks I would have gotten a nast note from the tax boys. They are only a few miles from Jersey and this is not the first misquote the NJ dealer has seen. But with $2k in you pocket you are happy till the steel tags go on and the clerk is demanding a check for an additional $2,000.

    Reinertsen took in my car under warranty but said they were working on it and diagnosed a bad battery but fact was the car never moved. They took the wheels and tires off to diagnose if the air sending units were bleeding the battery down but how can little batteries in the sensors cause a failure of the main battery? They also gouged the Rims but days later they were out of business. Then they said that coffee in the ignition caused the problem. But I don't drink coffee in the car. Perhaps GM was being taken for a final ride because they also said that you can't jump start a 9-3 but the tech wheeled out a battery caddy and then drove it in.

    Spurts and Specialist charged me about $600 for a major service. A few days later, wife says brakes sound rough but A REAL SAAB dealer would have perhaps changed out the pads on a major service. So, I drop the car off with "Herr Rolff" and don't mention that on Monday the car was here for a major $ervice. He calls back and says that hmmmmm eeeet looks like zeeee brakes and rotors are bad so $700 please. I arrived and examine the slight scratch on the rotors told Rolff to put on pads and get my car off the lift. Regarding the $600 major service .. "vell vat can I do" .. well Rolfie boy you could have joost put on zeee pads for free and kept a customer. You didn't you phony mit zee Swedish accent that keeps the Princetonian's all goo-goo. What they do from what I understand is "hide Rolff", kinda' like "Where's Waldo" but without the shirt. Since they had a few dealerships if you complained ... "yeah, we didn't know so we fired him" ... and what you don't know is that he was the Jap manager down the street "mit zee same ownership". My buds Mom had a Honda and started complaining about the Swedish Rollf guy.

    I really started to get the impression that the dealers were more the problem that the manufacturer, under Saab and GM. At least the ng's under GM kept running the longest. Of course I hope these XWd's hold up.
    Semper ubi sububi in caput tuum

  5. #15
    Saab Addict
    Join Date
    10 Mar 2011
    Location
    new jersey usa
    Posts
    832
    Saab(s)
    08/280/xwd & 09/210/xwd
    JMK was funny, as you walk in they have a Sonnet and a 96 with signs around them, "DO NOT OPEN DOORS, DO NOT SIT IN CAR. DON'T EVEN THINK OF ASKING TO!

    I used to do painting and there was orange peel and runs. If I did paint those cars I would never have admitted it and if I did, I was drunk. Real drunk. So I took the test rides of the 9-5's that I came to see that were said to be under CPO. The problem was that the advertised price was $2,000 more if you got the CPO.
    Upon chatting up the sales guy I mentioned the paint on those "restored" items in the showroom. He took me out back to show me his "restored" SPG and the hood was flaking off, he made a comment like the mechs aren't bad here but the paint shop guys are the walking dead.
    Semper ubi sububi in caput tuum

  6. #16
    Scot
    EqualOpportunity Offender
    Join Date
    08 Nov 2011
    Location
    NJ, United States
    Posts
    59
    Saab(s)
    1989 900 SPG Turbo,1993 9000 Aero Turbo, 2000 9-5 Aero, 2005 9-2x Aero, 2011 9-3 Aero Sedan Turbo4
    HAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...you NAILED ROLF!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    JMK are the biggest jackoffs, Reinertsen comes in second. Spurts and Specialist comes in third, but they stopped selling Saabs a while ago due to reputation and moved everyone to their Lawrenceville (I believe) location. When I bought my 9-3 about a year ago I went to a dealer outside of Philly, was a pain but I also avoided the pains at the aforementioned dealers. I think part of it was GM squeezing them and putzing around with them, but no excuses, they are mostly asshats there.

    The only reason I liked Spurts and Specialist is because it's like 12 minutes from my house and I knew the sales guy Kevin (he was a service guy for years, was very friendly with customers so they gave him a sales job). Whenever I would come in he would discount the work, most of the time he would take me outside to test-drive a new model and tell me where to take my Saab to have it fixed at 1/4 the price and have it fixed right. One time I came in for brakes and was quoted a HUGE number that made my junk shrivel. They told me they had to special order the pads and rotors from Saab because they were not able to turn them due to their composite makeup. Kevin took me for a stroll in the lot and wrote down a number of a guy to go to by Bridgewater, Kev added that the mechanics were lying to me. I went where he said and saved 75% on the brake job. One other time I was being super lazy and actually brought it in for tires. Kevin sat me down and talked me out of it, then went to Tirerack.com (AT HIS DESK in the dealership), highlighted the tires to purchase, emailed a link to me, and even filled in the area of a local shop by me that would receive them and mount them for me. If it wasn't for him then Spurts and Specialist of Princeton would be second on my shit list.

    But JMK takes the freaking cake. The first engine they replaced when I blew the factory one in the 9-2x Aero looked crooked/not-level. The second engine looked level, but "blew" and was misfiring on 2 of 4 cylinders. They lied that I needed to "burn in an O2 sensor", told me to go on my trip to Pittsburgh for 2 weeks, and caused me (unknowingly) to drive a few hundred over the warranty. The engine light was on because of the misfires and the car was shaking like a vibrator on slow mode. When they couldn't figure out what the problem was, they freaking disengaged the check engine light and told me that when the flat-4 boxer engines get old they "just shake". I didn't find out they disengaged the light until I took it to the DMV for inspection. They failed me and I drove around with an expired dealer's inspection sticker for almost 2 years...until I ran into a bit of luck with the hurricane and lots of tree branches to play "whack-the-Saab" with!
    Last edited by ScotHibb; 18 December 2012 at 18:56. Reason: Stupid autocomplete typos

  7. #17
    Jeffrey
    Master SaabTech/Moderator Burnsside42's Avatar
    Join Date
    25 Oct 2010
    Location
    Point Pleasant, PA
    Posts
    1,316
    Saab(s)
    - 86' 9KT - 95' 9K Custom CS - 06' 9-3 Combi - 07' 9-7X Arc - 08' 9-3 Convertible - 08' 9-3 TurboX -
    I have one of these cars @ work I get to fix - shame the owner doesn't want to fix all that is broken and worn out - but is concerned about little useless things. I tend to see these 9-2X cars are either owned by folk who love them and baby them/take care of them - or the complete opposite. The one I have in for repairs is the worse of the two sadly. The car is just shy of 100K and it's an auto turbo. Looks like it has double the miles on it.

    Keep in mind owners of these who goto a Saab dealer - we only know as much as we were told about these cars to fix them. That wasn't anything! lol We had to learn by trial and error on the unusual items. No support from Subaru and Saab made fixing the trouble ones much more challenging. Parts was another fiasco. Thankfully I work for a company who owns a Subaru dealer across the way and the guys there are extremely helpful and their diagnostic equipment works unlike mine.

    I like the cars - they can make me money.....
    European Motor Services, LLC - Point Pleasant, PA 18950 - www.europeanmotorsvc.com

  8. #18
    Saab Nut Brad Lauzze's Avatar
    Join Date
    17 Aug 2011
    Location
    Honeoye Falls, NY
    Posts
    395
    Saab(s)
    2011 9-3 Aero XWD Performance by Hirsch

    9-2x first post

    Same situation we had, trial and error. Fortunately, we had a tech who had worked at Subaru for a number of years that handled all of them for us.
    2011 Saab 9-3 Aero XWD Performance by Hirsch "Wolffe"

  9. #19
    Frank
    Administrator nordwulf's Avatar
    Join Date
    30 Jul 2010
    Location
    USA - Netherlands
    Posts
    7,901
    Saab(s)
    previous: 2006 9-3, 2001-06 9-5, 2011 9-4X
    I have the WIS for the 2005 9-2X but information is very limited compared to the other models. I hope Subaru's repair manuals were much better than this.

  10. #20
    Scot
    EqualOpportunity Offender
    Join Date
    08 Nov 2011
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    NJ, United States
    Posts
    59
    Saab(s)
    1989 900 SPG Turbo,1993 9000 Aero Turbo, 2000 9-5 Aero, 2005 9-2x Aero, 2011 9-3 Aero Sedan Turbo4
    From what I've learned many of the kids that bought the 9-2x (or their parent's bought it for them) based the purchase on it's price. Most were shopping for the Subaru and heard that Saab was discounting them much below what their Subaru counterpart was selling for. A lot of them had never been on a Saab lot before. I also have a theory that you don't hear a ton of stories regarding spun engine bearings because of all the Mods done on them, voiding the warranty. I was at my Princeton dealer getting the warranty lube/oil/etc and I was chatting with the sales guy I know, a guy came in and was about to buy TWO, one for each daughter heading off to school. He asked me if it was a good car (this was before my troubles), I talked him out of buying the turbo models as he was picking up automatics for two 19 year olds. I'm sure they took great mechanical care of those two cars...lol.

    Shame on people that can't keep up with maintaining their cars!

    @Burnside - have you run into any 9-2x models that had inner engine problems (compression, missing cylinders, spun bearings, etc)?

 

 

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