Okay, my daily is a Saab 9-3 2.2TiD Vector, its been a great car. Bought it off my brother in law who was the first owner, its now got 146k on it but it still returns 48/9 mpg and is mighty quick for an oil burner. The dual mass flywheel is just beginning to slip at gear changes at high revs and on this car, its £900+ to change!! Do I trade it in for something else or spend the cash on it? Erring on the side of better the devil you know, £900 is a lot cheaper than a few grand on a Ford Focus that will be worthless in 2 or 3 years... Any thoughts...?
Can you get a single mass flywheel replacement and put up with a bit more vibration? I hate selling cars and keep old ones going as long as possible. Personally, I would spend the money on the car I know as long as there are no other big jobs needing doing in the near future. My old Saab 9000 did 250k before I flogged it for £80 on eBay!
Your right Baysearcher, I found a flywheel and clutch kit for £895 chatted to my local garage and they reckoned on 200 labour, its reasonably straightforward apparently on the 9--3!!
A Saab is worth keeping especially if it's still returning good mpg. As you said, new = worthless in a very short amount of time, a thing I didn't realise untill my Focus got written off recently for, in my opinion, a relativly small bump. The insurance no way covered the cost of replacement. Keep the Saab. The same applies to old Volvo's and to a lesser extent, Beemers as well.
Can't beat an old Volvo! Re clutch, try a company called Nordic, they are good for Saabs, and check the part number against a Vauxhall Vectra of similar ilk, you may find it's the same without the "brand tax". Euro car parts are quoting 167 for the clutch, 438 for DM flywheel and 80 for the concentric slave - 685 inc vat - for LUK bits, not Mickey Mouse rubbish.... Every little helps!
Maybe you are in the mileage zone where more things will crop up ,it is always a gamble spending money on cars...
I had a similar thing going on with the Mrs's car, I got her one of those Polo blue gt's she loves it, you can't take it with you.
Look at getting a conversion kit that replaces the dual mass for a solid flywheel. They are available. Dual mass flywheels are totally pointless. I can honestly say I've never noticed the difference to drive a car with or without one. What I do notice is that I've never had flywheel trouble.
id stick with the saab, rather than a ford. or just buy a ford a really cheap one till you can get the saab done. a puegoet 307 is being offered for 650 mot'd till next year on my FB page just saying. it needs 2 new front disc 40 quid.
Had a similar dilema this weekend, but was only a timing belt/water pump on my golf tdi, was thinking of just driving it and see what happens as the I've always been anticipating the flywheel/clutch going on mine, which is about £1k. Done the timing belt/pump though, at 210k its the 3rd its had, and hopefully I'll get a few more years out of it, fingers crossed.
