TSG's Unified Fleet Thread

[thesameguy]

Dropped the Jag's headliner and related roof bits off at an upholstery shop this afternoon to be redone. I have never used this place before, but Yelp reviews were fantastic and they are right up the street so I thought I'd give it a go. The owner is super cool and nice to talk to. His rates are quite a bit lower than the shop I've used in the past, and he seems a *lot* more flexible (enthusiastic?) about materials and such. I'm a little excited - it seems like the type of place I'd feel good about taking work to in the future. After the... unsatisfying... results with the Benz from my usual shop, I'm happy to have found this guy.

https://www.yelp.com/biz/premier-upholstery-sacramento

Maybe in the future I can trade them a website for an interior.

[thesameguy]

Put a fair amount of miles on the Viggen over the past couple weeks. I guess "fair amount" for me - my annual mileage is like 10k, so I'm talking about like 200 miles. The weather here has been really nice, pretty much perfect convertible weather so I have been very happy to have it.

This is my second "9400" body (that's various '94-'03 900s & 9-3s), but I had some seat time in my dad's '02 and plenty of drives in other cars over the years. Honestly, I think these are crappy cars. They have motors and tires and whatnot, but the chassis is lackluster and interior appointments more Chevy than Cadillac. I would honestly go so far as to say the only thing worthwhile about these cars is the engines - it's a little mind-blowing that an engine more or less the same in 2002 as 1985 is as good as it is, but the Saab four cylinder turbo is just phenomenal. Way ahead of its time. I doubt anyone truly appreciated in the aughts what Saab had accomplished.

So, this Viggen is quite the dichotomy. In hardtop guise, its best attribute is probably the fact that it's a practical hatchback. It's just too imprecise and clumsy to be a legitimate 3-series or C-class competitor much less //M or AMG. All their refinement and attention to detail just leaves the 9-3 in the dust unless you're trying to move a refrigerator. But, the convertible is really, really good. All the things you might care about in a hardtop - those "performance" statistics, kind of fade away when you don't have a roof over your head. It doesn't handle all that well, it isn't quiet or composed. But it has NO ROOF, it closes freeway distances like nobody's business, and big turbo torque make for easy driving with all the satisfaction of rowing your own gears. It's no soft top race car, but it's an incredibly satisfying drive.

I'm not sure what its exact future is. I'm definitely not keeping it forever, but I may keep it into next year. With the Jag gone, it could be my newish car for a while - that'd be alright. I think its needs are limited to a new AC compressor, new tires, and some attention to the front bumper. Probably by next year it'll need a new top. I'll definitely deal with the bumper & compressor, but not sure I want to get to the top, but I'm not sure I don't.

[Cam]

[thesameguy]

I'm not mad at it.

This weekend was mostly yard work, but I decided to do a little h4x0ring on the parts car while it was still intact. I'm still baffled at how fast it is, so I really want to see if it has been tuned. Since the interior is coming apart anyway, I got started Sunday. Pulled out the glovebox and unwrapped a wire harness, exposing the two wires for the car's CAN bus and then spliced into them.



With access to the bus, I can use an interface made by "johnc" to read & write straight to the ECM. This is all rocket science as far as I'm concerned, but is actually four or five year old tech. I'm way behind the curve on this. Although I only need access to the two CAN wires, I decided to mock this up for real like, all professional, just to get a sense of what's involved. I will probably execute this on the Viggen as well. No real intention of tuning it, but I would like to turn on OpenSID now that I have a functioning SID2 in there. A test run on the parts car is a low-risk way to experiment. So, I ran the wires to the OBD2 plug under the dash so it's all easy-access & invisible.



I thought I was short an OBD2 -> DB9 cable so ordered one on Amazon. This morning, I realized I think I actually have one left over from the V70... and more importantly I think I know where it is. But, my short-term test was to be sure Tech 2 would still connect to the car. It does, so good on me.



Tonight I'll check to see if I have that cable and, if so, try and grab a copy of the parts car's ECM so I can mess around with t7suite. Kinda exciting!

[thesameguy]

Been fighting a some CELs on the Viggen. Well, I didn't know I was fighting them. Turns out I was. I was getting a P0101 and a pair of misfire codes (P1312 and P1334 maybe?) a few months ago. Codes would come and go, and I blamed them on the big vacuum leak from the brake booster. After I replaced the seal, the codes cleared themselves and didn't come back.

Until Monday. Spent all day driving around with the top down and the CEL popped on a little after 5pm. So, I guess it's a battle!

I took the MAF off to clean it, in doing so found this



Hmm. Maybe that's it.

Pulled the one off the parts car (PARTS CARS ARE AWESOME), so we'll see what happens next.

[thesameguy]

This felt pretty awesome...

2017-09-27 14:00:26.8035 Opening connection
2017-09-27 14:00:26.8313 Open called in Trionic7
2017-09-27 14:00:26.9401 Canbus channel opened
2017-09-27 14:00:26.9550 Session started
2017-09-27 14:00:27.9659 Aquiring ECU info
2017-09-27 14:00:28.0339 VIN: YS3DF55K522029033
2017-09-27 14:00:28.0689 Immo: 8610UH208102024
2017-09-27 14:00:28.1142 Engine type: :9-3 B205R LEV US
2017-09-27 14:00:28.1423 Software version: EC0XY3RC.50G
2017-09-27 14:00:28.2338 Connection closed
2017-09-27 14:00:44.7147 Opening connection
2017-09-27 14:00:44.7557 Open called in Trionic7
2017-09-27 14:00:44.8263 CombiAdapter ready
2017-09-27 14:00:45.8425 Acquiring FLASH content
2017-09-27 14:00:45.8781 Starting download of FLASH

It's not magic and it's not rocket science, but it's still some cool technologies to have at home.

Now I can analyze the actual tune on the parts car with software. Also means I have everything necessary to program any T7 ECM... just download a tune off the intertubes!

First thing I want to look into is exactly what's involved with divorcing Trionic 7 from all the body modules. I keep reading it's been done, but can't find any information on doing it. If I can learn this stuff, I could potentially run the engine out of the parts car in the XR4Ti and not bother with switching to older - but easier to program - T5. I just want stock performance at least initially, so tuning isn't even a consideration.

[thesameguy]

Guess Fall is the season of boost problems. XR went ppooooooooooooooooft and then nowhere fast. Spent about two hours trying to find what was leaking and got nowhere. I was just about to call it quits, when I heard a pooft from somewhere down low. It was close enough. Spent another hour replacing things with test pieces and disconnecting things and got really frustrated. As I was getting ready to pack it in for the night, lightning struck... the noise was from the damn boost controller!

This is one of those moments where I don't know how to feel. The boost controller is about 10 years old, but only has around 20,000 miles on it. I can't decide whether I should be happy about the time or angry about the mileage. Thing it, it's a quality Hallman part, not some random ebay garbage. I feel like it should generally last a lifetime, and shouldn't much be subject to straight age.

Bah.

It doesn't matter, it's gotta be replaced. Now I need to figure out what to replace it with. Although it's money I'd rather not spend, I'm secretly hoping there is a good, inexpensive electronic boost controller available here in '17. That'd absolutely make this worthwhile.

[thesameguy]

I went ahead and removed the Hallman boost controller and connected the wastegate actuator directly to the manifold then headed out for a test drive. The fluttery sick sound is gone, but there is still a really loud woooooo when the turbo spools. If anyone's heard a really old turbo, you know the sound. This turbo is pretty old - maybe 10 years - but has less than 5000 miles on it. It's a genuine Turbonetics T3/T4. It seriously sounds like old, failed turbo. I can't for the life of me explain such a sudden change in behavior. Real weird.

Car seems ok, other than oddly loud. And I do mean real loud. I'm going to keep driving it hard, sans boost controller at about half boost and see what happens. I guess it's not the end of the world if I have to get a new turbo. It'd literally be the first turbo I have ever replaced in my entire life due to failure, so I'm not too upset.

Or, that's how I felt until the girl ripped the bumper off the Aero and I priced out a replacement. Highly likely I'm going to have a $5000 Saab with a $1000 bumper and an XR4Ti with an embarrassingly loud turbo. FML.

[Random]

I thought turbo whistle was how the panties were made to drop? The diesel truck guys certainly seem to think so...

[thesameguy]

It's not really a whistle - it's a loud woooooooooooooo. Cummins ain't got nothing on Lima.