Saab 900 gearbox rebuild

Sup you little shits. I come from /mu/.

Recently, I happened to acquire a '91 Saab 900 S (light pressure turbo) via an inheritance. The car is in a rather good shape, no rust, engine runs smooth, interior is decent. Unfortunately, it seems that the gearbox in these cars was prone to failure, and they often needed a rebuild. Obviously, as it couldn't be any other way, after an odd whining noise in fifth gear appeared, my mechanic has told me that mine is one of the "lucky ones" that needs to be rebuilt.

I actually like the car and it's quite comfy and fun to drive, and my instinct tells me that I should rebuild the gearbox instead of scrapping the thing, but I'm no car expert and I don't want to throw my money into an endless abyss of misery.

Since gearbox rebuilds are expensive and it's such an old car, am I getting into a total nightmare here? With the gearbox issues sorted, are they reliable cars in the long run?

Help me Veeky Forums

(Not the one in pic, but almost the same)

legit ugliest car i've ever seen in my entire life

If I was interested in your pleb opinion, I would have stopped raping your mother and sent her to fetch you already.

moron.

A rebuild won't be cheap. I would run it till something breaks and just replace it with a used unit. Then you can rebuild the spare if you intend to keep the car, or just not fucking worry about it.

Rebuilding a trans is labor heavy, that'll probably be most of the cost in having it done.

Def worth saving though, they're getting rare and nice cars.

I'm a bit worried about finding a replacement transmission though. They aren't many of these left on the road in EU, and I don't want to be stuck for months on end with an undrivable car waiting for a part to show up.

Glad to see that they're worth saving. For some reason I really felt that scrapping the car would have been a huge mistake.

It only depends how much the car is worth to you
You wont be turning a profit by keeping it, thats for sure, but if you enjoy driving it, why not spend some to fix it

Where in Europe are you?
I can rebuild it off you on the cheap
Local mechanics charge 650€ just to drop the tranny

Oh I'm sure I won't be turning a profit. That seems practically impossible for 99.9% of cars out there. The perk is that I actually got it for free, so spending 2-3k€ doesn't seem too crazy. I just hope that it isn't one of those cars that just keep on breaking down all the time, and the gearbox rebuild ends up being redundant because the rest of the car is a piece of shit.

I'm in Spain, shithole of the continent. How much does a rebuild usually cost at a local mechanic? I'm not sure how much I should be paying for a job like this.

Depending on how fucked it is, a couple grand or more
Usually it's cheaper to just swap a working one in
If you want to do it yourself you'll need an engine brace and to drop the tranny
Once it's out, since it's fwd you have to remove the axle couplings
Then you split the cases and hope nothing falls out
Clean all the ferric schmoo you can find and look for something like a sheared gear, bent fork or misaligned selector
Combat the urge of slashing your wrists and try to find a replacement