So, I’ve started a new employment just a couple weeks ago which means I’m exposing my old ’99 Saab 9-5 to a lot more trouble than it’s used to. Instead of a 10 km morning and evening ride, I’ve increased the daily rides seven fold; about 75 km each morning and evening.

A few days into this new ritual, I got a flashing engine fault signal on the dashboard, and I immediately hooked up my fault code reader. The response was a pending 1312 (I think), and as my app couldn’t (or wouldn’t) resolve that error code for me, I googled it. Well, I usually google the error codes anyway, to get all aspects and views on the fault.

As usual, I got a lot of input. It’s always nice to see how huge the interest for these old cars are all over the world.

Anyway, the 1300 error code appears to be (well, the evidence is rather conclusive) engine misfiring. Getting the 1312 appears to mean that cylinder one and two are the ones misfiring. 1334 would, per that logic, mean cylinders three and four. A blank 1300 (flashing) means that the misfiring cylinder could not be determined.

So, I bought four new spark plugs and installed them today. A have noticed that two of four screws holding the ignition package in place has been missing for quite some time. Ignorantly I’ve failed to fix that, not knowing that these actually holds the connectors for the spark plugs in place. The two remaining screws had also come loose, and on top of not having replaced the spark plugs for God knows how long, the left side – corresponding to cylinder one and two – had probably gotten a bit too loose. Perhaps road vibrations would cause bad connectivity for spark plug one and two.

Anyway, after replacing the plugs, the engine seems to run much more smoothly and quietly. Granted, I haven’t taken it for a test run (since yesterday evening was the annual cray fish fest, and those buggers ban car driving all the following day), but idle seems much more smooth now.

Also, the last month or so, I’ve noticed an increase in fuel consumption. The lowest I’ve been is about 6.9 per 100 km, and now it’s on 8.1. Perhaps that will decrease now as well.