The very simple fix would be to buy my wife some thicker knickers. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to wash with her so I am going to have to fix the passenger-side heated seat in our Saab 9-3 by either buying a replacement heating element or by finding a second-hand seat on eBay and replacing the whole shebang.
You’ve met our Saab before, in 2018 just a couple of months after we bought it. We paid only £2300 for it and since then it has covered almost 50,000 miles and not let us down once. Most owners of old cars tend to fib a bit about reliability and I am no exception: the electric fuel pump packed up but at least it did so outside the house.
I became rather fond of the car as soon as we got it thanks to its smooth and economical light-pressure turbo engine, nicely bedded-in gearbox and hydraulic steering that is better than most modern cars’ EPAS systems. Last summer, my relationship with this Swede turned from strong affection to something rather more serious.
The turning point came with a visit to our local hand car wash. Noticing that the Saab’s black soft top was looking like an experiment from the Royal Botanical Gardens, he offered to clean it for £15 if I could leave the car with him.
God knows what chemical was used but an hour later the top was like new, with all traces of green moss etc gone. Never have I spent such a small sum that reaped such epic reward. But back to the heated seat issue.
No second-hand seats in the correct colour were available on eBay but this was no bad thing because it would have been miserable if I’d bought a seat, fitted it and then discovered that its seat heater was broken too.
There’s a heated pad in the seat base and another in the backrest and, according to web-based Saab nerds, they’re wired in series, so if one goes, the other stops working too. Which one was broken? Good question. I decided to be safe and buy both.
