Glacier Blue 9-5 Aero Wagon Project

[9Kwrecker]

I am now extremely tempted to finally install the one I had painted for my wagon a few years ago, I kinda forgot how much better it looks with a spoiler.

I kinda think those RKs look awesome in that shade, I still say I like that shade of metallic silver better than the choice I made on the powder coat on mine.

[Troup]

Originally Posted by 9Kwrecker

I am now extremely tempted to finally install the one I had painted for my wagon a few years ago, I kinda forgot how much better it looks with a spoiler.

I kinda think those RKs look awesome in that shade, I still say I like that shade of metallic silver better than the choice I made on the powder coat on mine.

You should do it. Not super hard. Totally worth it. I'm a sucker for factory spoilers. I ended up using Saab bolts that I had laying around to mount it. I don't know if the spoiler was tapped when I got it, or if the body shop tapped them (The bolt holes had some type of material built up in them and couldn't tell),but it was a metric size that's used in a lot of Saab applications.

hahah, you should repaint your wheels if you like these better. Or we can trade it you want

[9Kwrecker]

Originally Posted by Troup

You should do it. Not super hard. Totally worth it. I'm a sucker for factory spoilers. I ended up using Saab bolts that I had laying around to mount it. I don't know if the spoiler was tapped when I got it, or if the body shop tapped them (The bolt holes had some type of material built up in them and couldn't tell),but it was a metric size that's used in a lot of Saab applications.

hahah, you should repaint your wheels if you like these better. Or we can trade it you want

The knockoff spoiler I have for my black wagon is tapped if I recall. It also has tape pads on it, but one of them needs to be heated up and replaced because the shop that painted it got paint all over the adhesive because they peeled the backing back to hang it for paint.

On the wheels you might have had me if yours were RK1s lol

[Troup]

I took the wagon out to visit the 92 9000 yesterday. All recent repairs seem to be holding up well, no boost or coolant leaks. Subframe bushings are still really bad and distract from the driving experience, so that's next on the list. I picked up a subframe from the junkyard a couple weeks back to replace the existing rusty one. It cleaned up well with some elbow grease and the pressure washer.

I can't get over how much better this car looks.














A Saab friend picked up an OEM cargo mat from the junkyard for me for $10. It looks great! Just needs to flatten out a bit

[tuner4life]

That thing is really looking nice! The color is growing on me..

[9Kwrecker]

Looking at these pics really has me wondering how much difference there is between ice blue and glacier blue. I'm sure they're different but they look awfully close going by these pics and looking at my new ice blue 9-3 out the window at the same time.

[Troup]

Originally Posted by tuner4life

That thing is really looking nice! The color is growing on me..

I've always liked the color, but I probably wouldn't have ever gotten it for myself. I'll admit, it's definitely growing on me as well. The color is so much more rich looking with the proper hood on it.

[Troup]

Originally Posted by 9Kwrecker

Looking at these pics really has me wondering how much difference there is between ice blue and glacier blue. I'm sure they're different but they look awfully close going by these pics and looking at my new ice blue 9-3 out the window at the same time.

Yeah, agreed. I really thought yours was glacier blue when you showed me a picture

[Troup]

I wrapped up a bunch of work on the wagon this past week. I got the new subframe and polyurethane subframe bushings installed. When I dropped the subframe, I found that the lower rear motor mount, the lower transmission mount, as well as both sway bar bushings were trashed. I went ahead and took care of all of that. Luckily I happened to have a Powerflex transmission bushing on hand.


Since I had some time while waiting on the other parts and the subframe was already dropped, I thought now was as good a time as any to drop the pan. The pan wasn't abnormally sludgey (a little bit over the exhaust), but it did have some coffee ground looking gunk in it. I cleaned everything really well, replaced the three seals in the pick up and crossover tube, and am going to run Royal Purple for a couple oil changes to try and clean everything up in there.

I also spent a great deal of time cleaning the engine and engine bay from underneath using Simple Green, a pressure washer, and some brake parts cleaner.

Still a long way to go, but so much better than it was before.

For anyone interested in the differences among Powerflex and Propart's subframe bushings, I can't necessarily speak to their longevity differences, but I will say that the Propart's ones seem to be much stiffer and were more challenging to install than the Powerflex ones that I installed on my other Espresso Black 9-5 wagon. The car still has vibration issues at idle, but I'm willing to bet that I need to finish replacing the upper motor and transmission mount before I can blame that on stiff subframe bushings.

Some before pictures:











Five of the six subframe bushings were removable by hand. It's a myth that only the rear subframe bushings go bad on the 9-5's.



The plate that secures the rear subframe bushing. This one was so bad that it was allowing metal on metal contact back there.

[Troup]

And After:







When dropping the downpipe, of course I had a problem stud that ended up stripping out which required I drop the exhaust housing to extract. I ended up replacing all 7 studs on the turbo exhaust housing with stainless studs and copper nuts.

[Troup]

After doing the subframe bushings, the car had less vibration, but it was still pretty bad. I decided to get the last 2 upper motor mounts from a black friday sale. The passenger side one arrived first and I threw it on. Much better. I didn't realize that all of the hydraulic fluid had leaked out of the existing one. I thought that was a power steering leak

[Troup]

The door handles have had some weird fading / chipping on them since I've got the car that look like barnacles on a boat. I got a set from the junkyard that were in better shape. They look 100x better in my opinion. I couldn't ignore it. hahah.

The old ones:



New ones:



We also swapped out the door panels for ones that were gray with black inserts as opposed to gray on gray. It looks great with the solid black dash and black carpeting.

[Troup]

Took some indulgent night shots tonight

[Troup]

Finished up the last motor mount today and put on a Genuine Saab oil cap that I got on black friday as well. (the previous pictures were with the polished oil cap from my other wagon). Zero regrets on pulling the trigger on doing all of the mounts. This one was shot as bad as the other 3 were and came apart once I got it off the car. This car has transformed in the past couple of months and is so much fun to drive finally.

[dan-the-kid]

Whoa, its really come along! Nice work.

How difficult was it to drop the subframe? I need to replace the bushings on my wagon as well. Looks like you only had a jack supporting the whole engine/transmission?

[Troup]

Originally Posted by dan-the-kid

Whoa, its really come along! Nice work.

How difficult was it to drop the subframe? I need to replace the bushings on my wagon as well. Looks like you only had a jack supporting the whole engine/transmission?

Thanks!

Dropping the subframe is alot of work, but not as much as you might expect.

The biggest variable is dropping the downpipe. If you have a stud break on you, it makes the job alot more complicated.

It's also not necessary unless you want to do OEM bushings. You can install the proparts or powerflex polyurethane ones without dropping the subframe.I only dropped it on this car because I was swapping out the entire subframe for one that was in better shape.

And yeah, I only had a jack under it. The upper motor mounts will help support it, but I'd recommend doing a jack like this or an engine support that supports from above. I did have to remove the jack to be able to manipulate the frame out from under the car and then again to put it back in and didn't have any issues. I don't promote the method, but I didn't have a support available to me. If you do it my way, just don't be underneath the car unless there's a jack supporting the motor obviously. I don't think the passenger side mount will allow the engine to drop even if it has failed based on the way it's designed. I'm not sure about the driver side though.

[Troup]

Over the holidays, I had access to my friend's business that has a sandblaster and powdercoat line. I had a "blast" restoring some parts for the wagon. I am super pleased with the results and extremely grateful for my friend

[Troup]

The powdercoating was amazing, but it ended up being a double edged sword. I did the original turbo oil and coolant lines when I refinished all of the parts. Alot of time passed before I got the parts back in my possession and then a while longer before I actually installed them on the car. I neglected to make sure that all of the sand media was clean from the lines before installing them. To make matters worse, I actually installed the lower mileage and cleaner TD04 from my other Espresso 9-5 while doing all of the work. The car developed a rattle on startup that would go away when it warmed up. I thought it was a loose wastegate, but upon further investigation, I found that the shaft had MUCH more shaft play then it did when I installed it only 1 day prior. It was so loose that the compressor wheel was hitting the housing. I took the turbo back off and disassembled it to find that the bearings and shaft appear to have been sanded. The oil line wasn't primed with oil or anything, so on first start up, it just blasted a bunch of sand straight into the turbo. I will be rebuilding the original glacier blue turbo as the lower mileage one is no longer a good rebuild candidate. I will be installing a new billet aluminum compressor wheel, but it is coming from Taiwan of course. The car will be down for a couple of weeks which I hate.

This was a silly mistake that has cost me a lot of time and a little bit of unnecessary money. Learn from my mistake! I will say, the lines look amazing

The turbo shaft. You can see the shiny parts where the sand chewed up the shaft.



Before I swapped any turbo parts:



After different TD04,refinished lines, brackets, and wastegate:






The Krona intake from my other wagon swapped over. It all looked great... for a day! Now all disassembled again.

[Troup]

While I was doing turbo work, I also put on a set of new tires. We went with General G-max AS-05 after doing alot of research. The tires that were on the car were trashed from the drive back from Denver on a blown rear suspension. They were also "Ironman" cheap tires in the stock size which is too small in my opinion. We put 235/45/17's on that fill the wheel gap pretty well. They are pretty meaty tires on top of being bigger... maybe a little too meaty. The Sumitomo's on my other wagon in this size aren't as THICC. I haven't had much of a chance to drive on them with the turbo situation, but my first impression is that they are great tires for the money.

[Troup]

Swapped in a bunch of powdercoated stuff over the weekend. Did the rear subframe and upper control arms with new OEM bushings in them. Installed new Moog adjustable lower control arms. Also put the powdercoated control arms with new Lemfoerder bushings in them as well. Things are looking alot better underneath the car. I did a new OEM wheel bearing on the passenger front as well since I broke a stud a couple of months ago. Everything on the car is rusty

New parts and fluids to go in:




Junk that came out of the rear:





New stuff going in:







Old control arm on top, new on below.



Also threw on the powdercoated subframe support brackets. Looks amazing in person:



Still waiting on my new compressor wheel, but the turbo has been rebuilt with the exception of the wheel. All of the parts were put in an electrolysis bath and had the rust removed. It worked pretty well. The TD04 that is assembled is not mine unfortunately or I'd be driving this car right now