NG 900 front suspension

[Crazyswede]

I have my 98 NG900SE back on the road as the daily driver. the good about this car is that it is quiet, boosts nicely, and gets good gas mileage. We recently reinforced both rear upper shock mounts as one had punched through and the other was on its way. I have put Bilstein HD shocks and struts on the car but this was probably a mistake. The rears work well enough with the reinforced mounts but the fronts have been a problem almost since the beginning. I have blown out multiple upper strut mounts and not under any real aggressive driving. also of note is the NG900 front springs are crap and they like to break their ends off. I have probably replaced both front springs 2 or 3 times and the current ones are both broken.

That said this is the year I solve this front suspension issue. The NG's have non alignable suspension other than Toe. Genuine Saab makes reinforced upper strut mounts for the 9-3...one idea is to weld the towers with camber plates drilled for the 9-3 mounts and then put them on the 900 struts. I would also like to find out if the 9-3 strut will work in the 900 if the upper strut mount pattern is redrilled.

ultimate goal is to convert to a stronger upper mount, coil over springs, and camber plates to allow for alignment. The car might be a lot more fun to drive then. Though the car has 234,000 miles on it the body is still decent and worth playing with.

[Crazyswede]

I put the summer tires on yesterday and the strong pull to the left is now gone. This is a puzzle I deal with every year I put snow tires on. No pull with summer tires, pull with winter tires. Easy you say...its the tires. But no amount of adjusting pressure or moving tires around the car causes the pull to go away. I can think of no suspension changes due to running the winter tires. But with summer 205/55/16 tires the car tracks dead straight down the road. Put a brand new set of winter tires on 185/65/15's and the pull to the left is extreme enough to wear your left arm out on longer drives. I will have to put another new set on next year and see if it remains.


While I had the tires off I inspected everything. The sway bar end links looked fine and there were no signs of obvious damage to the struts or bushings. The stock bushings are a bit mushy but they tend to be like that when new too. I am 99% sure that the front end clunks are coming from the top of the Bilstein strut impacting the bottom of the aluminum strut mount when the rubber damper runs out of stretch. This in turn eventually blows the rubber apart or shatters the mount.

[Jordan]

Changing the overall tire diameter does change the geometry/alignment of the suspension and maybe exacerbates some issue. Usually those cars go through lower control arm bushings/ball joints like nobody's bid-ness. Sometimes it is hard to see, it's best just to replace anything that hasn't been replaced at this point and recheck your alignment.

[Crazyswede]

Changing the overall tire diameter does change the geometry/alignment of the suspension and maybe exacerbates some issue. Usually those cars go through lower control arm bushings/ball joints like nobody's bid-ness. Sometimes it is hard to see, it's best just to replace anything that hasn't been replaced at this point and recheck your alignment.

Yeah I have all that on the to do list. I have been stuck in this house closing saga for a couple of months now and very limited on spending any money. New bushings, ball joints etc are on the menu for the future. Also a new blower motor for the van and a few more parts needed to reassemble the engine in the 86.

[Geoff]

We had that same pulling problem (except to the right) on our 99 9-3 for the last 20K or so miles we had it. Except it pulled with the summer tires on and was straight with the snows. I had to do a bunch of suspension work on that car but in the 175k miles we owned it, it only ever needed one balljoint.

I remember seeing somewhere on the internets that the 9-3 top mounts (and therefore the stronger genuinesaab.com ones) will fit if you open up the mount holes in the NG900. But I think the spring seats on the NG900 strut are different than the 9-3 strut so you'd have to use 9-3 uprights if you wanted to use 9-3 springs. I don't know if the 9-3 top mounts would work with the NG900 springs/struts but I think I have a used 9-3 top mount you could have to look at/measure

For what it's worth, both of the front springs on our 9-3 broke at the ends too. There's supposed to be a zinc shim that sits between the spring and the lower seat (on the strut) to prevent the springs and seats from rusting, which causes the ends of the springs to snap off.