03 SAAB 9-3 CODES: P0116, P1300 & P0301 HELP

[LGERDTS]

P0116 I believe it is my temperature thermostat. Every once in a while my thermostat guage will drop all the way down to cold and stay there till I stop and turn off the car for about 5 min. then it works fine. I believe my thermostat is sticking open.

P1300 is "Torque limitation signal low" not sure what this is. Could it have something to do with my serpentine belt I just replaced?

P0301 is "Cylinder 1 misfire detected" Does this mean I need to change my spark plugs? If so what spark plugs do I need to get?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated. I bought this car about 6 months ago and it only had 87,000 miles on it and I have put another 10,000 miles on it. So far I have changed the fuel pump, fuel filter, serpentine belt & idler pulley and I have had to add coolant Pentofrost SF and changed the oil filter and oil (Moble 1 Ultimate full synthetic 5w-30).

Right now every once in a while and mostly when I am climbing a hill it will start stuttering/cutting out as if it is running out fuel and the check engine light will be blinking while it is doing this, then it will go back to a solid light. It doesn't matter what gear I shift into it will continue to do this and barely keep going. I have to pull over and turn the car off for about 1/2 hr before I can start it again and drive okay. It will drive okay usually for a while (a day). Help what is wrong, it makes the car unreliable. I live in the mountains and work down in the city....need reliability.

[Digger]

Your flashing engine light means that your misfire is bad enough to do serious damage while driving and if you don't have a couple of grand laying around to fix what you could break, you need to fix your misfire NOW.

Give your wire harness a good close up visual inspection with a hands on grabbing and wiggling things to check your harness for bad connections. Even at 10 below zero a bad thermostat doesn't instantly send the temp gage of a warm engine to full cold and this could be a bad wire connect, or temp sensor, or worst case the ECM. If this started with the belt change, check those cables first.

P0301 Cylinder 1 misfire detected could be caused by spark plug, fuel injector, coils, cables, plug connects, or even the ECM and if you are constantly adding coolant a bad head gasket. If you have the 4 in 1 DIC coil packs swap spark plug 1 with plug 4, if you have individual coil packs swap coil 1 with coil 4 before you swap plugs to see if your misfire moves.

If you didn't find your problem in the wiring or by moving the misfire, you are not going to fix this without spending money on parts you might not need, or using a professional quality scan tool and I suggest you use a Tech 2, Your torque signal low means that your engine computer has detuned to limit torque and protect the engine. The flashing light means that the computer has done all it can do. Blow up the turbo and it's an easy $1500 if you can't replace it yourself, bust a crank and you kiss the engine goodbye.

[Bartman]

The most common cause of the temp gauge falling is a bad engine temp sensor. If it's not that, it might be the thermostat. Both are easy DIY changes. The P0116 indicates it's the sensor itself.

P1300 is "catalyst damaging misfire". It's related to the P0301. Replace your spark plugs with the factory recommend NGK plugs unless you know that it's been done reasonably recently. Gap them to .9mm. If it's not your plugs, you probably need a new DIC (Direct Ignition Cassette). That could easily be the cause of your hill climbing problems. Both are easy DIY but the DIC is $$$. Use only factory DIC's.

Fix those