I'm looking at a '95 850 Sportwagon tomorrow. I've owned an S70 n/a, which I should not have sold, but am concerned about reliability of the turbo and engine on this car. The car I'm looking at has around 100k on it, with maintenance records (or so I am told). I figure I'll have to do the timing belt (again), but my real concern is durability of the turbos on these cars. (I had a Saab once that went through turbochargers frequently). This particular car was allegedly well taken care of.

I see many references on this site to high-mileage turbo models, but don't know if they have the original hardware under the hood.

Thanks for any advice.

Bill

 

Like any car parts will wear out, and if you want to make it to the high miles then yeah you may need to replace the turbo, depends how well the car was maintained, if it was beat on or not. Turbos, especially 15Gs, are cheap anyways. I finally blew my turbo at 215k miles.

 

Thanks for the reply. I realize that things wear out, so long as its not a recurring problem. 215,000 for a turbo is great. How is your engine holding up under the added stress? Any oil consumption problems, etc?

 

What do you mean added stress? Of the turbo? It held up fine. The NA and turbo engines are different, so I don't think you're really adding extra stress onto the engine by having a turbo since they were designed for one.

 

Dont worry about it. Just make sure the car is in good shape and spend a little time looking for oil leaks. If you find one that is dry your in good shape.

 

What model is a "850 Sportwagon" ?

My '97 GLT wagon has just over 200K miles on it and the LPT is still tickin' along.

 

I don't know. It is what the ad says. Not a real model?

 

Some 850 wagons came with the badge "sportwagon" on them.