Through Winter
2 February 2007, 74,701
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I |
n late March I was meant to be
going to Africa, but owing to circumstances beyond my control I will remain in
the
Chef’s SID (or Saab Information Display, or trip computer) is suffering from a
common complaint of Saabs - dead pixels on the display. Rather than the pixels not working, the
screen ribbon contacts crack and as a result, a line or two of pixels stops
displaying. This is a design fault
caused by high temperatures - in use the SID does get hot - as I understand,
the contacts in the ribbon expand and contract when going 
from hot to cold and eventually fail. At the moment the unit is still usable but it’s
getting worse. I can try to repair the
unit myself, I can have it sent away for repair or I can replace it with a new
unit. At the moment it’s annoying but I
can live with it.
I will write a little bit more
about SID and what it shows. It is a
relatively simple trip computer with four functions: the outside temperature,
the distance to empty, the average speed and the average fuel consumption (both since the last reset). SID2 adds to this an overspeed warning (it beeps if you exceed a given speed)
and an estimated time to go (based on the
input of the distance of the drive).
It’s not worth upgrading from SID1 to SID2, my GPS unit gives me the
estimated time of arrival if I need it.
One of the features missing from
the Saab Information Display is the instantaneous miles per gallon figure. I’ve thought about this and decided that it
doesn’t much matter for a couple of reasons.
One is that whilst interesting, the instantaneous miles per gallon
figure is academic for the most part. It
may be interesting to note that at a constant fifty six miles per hour the car
is returning sixty four miles per gallon, but as soon as the car experiences a
change in speed, gradient, road surface or whatever so the fuel consumption
figure can and does change. This can
cause drivers to watch their instantaneous miles per gallon figure all too
closely!
Now what I would have liked to see
on the SID is the engine oil temperature such that I know when the TiD is
properly warmed up...
Writing of things warming up, I
have the automatic air conditioning set such that the air conditioning
compressor is not activated unless the air temperature is 13°C or above. There’s no point in running the compressor
when it’s cold outside unless the interior is misting up. Now that we’re in April and warmer days are
arriving the system is seeing a little more use. Except I’m sure the system is overcooling the
cabin; I’ll report back on this later.
I’ve continued fiddling with the
9-3’s tyre pressures. As standard the
handbook recommends 32 PSI all around.
The recommended high load, high speed pressure is 36 PSI. On 32 PSI all around the car feels slightly
wallowly. Yes, the ride is fairly supple
but the car doesn’t feel very composed under even moderate cornering load. It’ll also wheelspin all too easily. Increasing the pressures stabilises matters
just a little bit but it does noticeably firm the ride.
As spring appeared I ran a tank of
ASDA diesel in the car. It didn’t occur
to me until then that I had only used Shell in the 9-3. Anyway, my previous own diesels - Geoffrey and Lucy would run on
most diesel-like fuels and I never noticed any difference in how they ran. With the Saab... on ASDA diesel, he soots
under moderately high load and did not feel all that responsive. On ordinary BP, the responsiveness returns
and it doesn’t soot much, either. I’m
not sure if this is a placebo sensation - because many people believe
supermarket fuel to be inferior to branded stuff I somehow believed the car to
run poorer on ASDA juice. I’ll need many
thousands of miles of comparable driving on the different fuels and some test
track times before I’m able to answer the question, “is branded diesel ‘better’
for my Saab?”
The overall fuel consumption to
date is 49·9 miles per gallon.