Very very sluggish in 1st gear

[TheNewGuy]

Hey everyone. So I just bought a 06 Saab 93 2.0T with the 5spd manual. It has no engine light at all but first gear is a nightmare. You floor it and you feel like a 2 year old on a pedal bike could smoke you. The other gears seem to be fine. The turbo works as it should. I did over 100mph with it on the way home and it handled that fine with no lag or jumps. No surges. No spitting or sputtering. Just severely bogged down in first. The guy I got it from said it’s due to a pin hole in the crappy stock intake but I kinda ain’t buying that. On the way home I came to a stop sign on a hill and I almost didn’t make it up. The car didn’t want to go. Once it got moving it was fine. It’s a rocket in 3rd and up. I called my normal mechanic and he basically said we should just start replacing parts until we figure it out. Unfortunately I didn’t hit the lottery today so I didn’t like that idea. Anyone have any cheap fixes I can try before I get into the big scary stuff?

[Digger]

Just because its a Saab doesn't mean it's a secret and the 2.0t in your Saab is the GM echotech with a Trionic engine controller. This engine works like any other gas engine except that for maintenance and programming you need the Saab software. Every GM dealer has a Tech 2, only a few have Saab software and odds are the tester you rent from the local auto parts store isn't going to come with Saab software. A trip to the local Saab specialist gets you to the scanner and software which will cost you some money, but will most likely save you twice as much in purchase price of parts you didn't need.

Most of us aren't clairvoyant and that means that we need to guess at all the little operational details that you didn't mention when asking for advice like what is the tach telling you when you step on the gas in 1st, so the best advice you will get from me is start by cleaning the throttle body and watching the butterfly when you turn the key to the on position. A two man job that will give you all sorts of helpful information to pass on.

[TheNewGuy]

Thanks for the response. The rpms seem to be acting normal just going up slow and accelerating slow. Not jumping or over reving or anything like that. Last night I did clean the throttle body slightly and it acted great all night. This morning I came out and it was back to being very sluggish. Maybe I just need to do a more thorough cleaning?

[Digger]

A good throttle body cleaning fixes lots of drivability issues and do take a look at how well the butterfly moves after you clean. Should you need to replace the throttle body, do a search for my throttle body posting of a couple years ago and find the cheapest replacement cost GM part number. The Saab part number leads to a price 4 times the generic GM number.

[cecil]

my came white error at the water (feeler/sonde something cant remember the name) , is our off order, or something was not right measured by this thing (sonde), fix that and you problem maybe fixet,

[l VANDAMMEIT l]

I had a similar issue.
It was my turbo inlet pipe.
The pipe between the turbo and air filter.