Eunos Chump

The Saab is back!  The dealer put a new turbo on it and cleaned out the sump and breather pipes. Apparently it was just starting to sludge up... a likely story, I suspect it was clogged solid and the turbo was the first part to fail (the spindle had snapped, suggesting the bearing had run dry).  It's fine now anyway, no smoke or stink of burnt oil or 'owt. VFR has properly failed it's MOT.  Major items are the rear wheel bearings and the seals on the rear exhaust pipes, where they go into the collector.  It's a serious amount of dismantling to reach those, and of course they're all rusty, but it's way too cold to hang out in the garage.  Rear pads are also low, they didn't last long - 18 months, maybe?  Oh, and it needs a rear tyre.  Garage wanted £600 to fix all of that, NOT HAPPENING.

The Saab had a spectacular turbo failure on Sunday - within a few seconds it consumed all of it's oil, converting it into a massive grey smokescreen that stopped all the traffic behind us.  I pulled over immediately and switched it off, but if the engine has survived remains to be seen - it may have ingested debris. The RAC brought it home, and the dealer picked it up last night.  I'm letting them repair it; if I got a refund I'd only have to find another, and there's a reasonable risk of that blowing up too.  And it was really nice up to that point. This means the Mrs is still driving the Rover, while I've got a choice of miseries: getting really cold and wet on the VFR, or suffering in the MX5 (which is very leaky, often stalls, the wipers shriek, and the heavy clutch is bloody awful in congested traffic).

I collected Mrs B's Saab today.  It was in deepest London so I took the train (London is SO HORRIBLE, how can people live there?).  Anyway, it was all good but these photos do flatter it a bit; there are some little marks on the bodywork and some bits of trim need a bloody good scrub.  The alarmingly complicated power roof seems to work fine. It is NICE, though it has that dead, wooden steering that Cavaliers have, and there is some scuttle shake (suspension is pretty firm which doesn't help).  These came with 2.0 turbo engines in 3 different power levels - I can't deduce which version this is, but it's quite lairy.  It's also got subwoofers, for additional Abba enjoyment.