1986 SAAB 900 Carb (Petrol) review from UK and Ireland

For a 16 year old car, remarkably little - and mostly relatively minor.

Rear shock absorber detached, and rear suspension needed about £700 of work to rebuild, including some welding. This may have been due to rust.

Needed some welding around front suspension area to pass MOT.

Required fix of ground fault in rear lights.

Required carb adjustment to pass MOT emissions test.

Required new distributor cap (replaced rotor arm too) to try and make engine run smoother from cold - burned electrodes. This helped, but the carb was probably needing cleaned out - although I never actually got the time to overhaul this before I have the car away. It ran very rough on cold days, sometimes on only 2 or 3 cylinders if I let it idle with the choke out, but was just fine after warming up for 5 minutes, or if I kept the mixure lean, and foot on the accelerator at idle. It wouldn't go above about 65 mph probably because of this carb problem.

Heated seats stopped working, although not really worth fixing.

Rear demister decayed (expected with age)

A very solid, comfortable, and pleasant to drive car. Nice soft suspension that gave a comfortable ride on the often poor UK roads. For a 16 year old vehicle, amazingly all instruments, the original Phillips radio (after a little rewiring), and the heater all still worked perfectly. Lots of boot space, but had a silly spacesaver spare wheel.

This vehicle was very uneconomic. The 1985cc carburettor petrol engine was quite thirsty, as one would expect for a relatively unsophisticated petrol engine that was being started from cold, and run for short journeys of 10 miles or so, while hauling nearly 1.7 tonnes of steel.