I have a SAAB 2000 95, and the heat isn’t working. I was told by a local shop that the blend door motor isn’t opening to allow the system to switch from air to heat. He said that the heating system was working, but that the hot air can’t exit the dash. He said it would have to be repaired at a dealership. When I called the closest dealership the person I spoke to said he had no idea how much it would cost. Do you have any ideas?
Could cost a small fortune, depending on how deep Saab…or GM rather buried the door motor…Sometimes it is hiding right behind your glove box…You just drop the glove box door down and can usually see much of the Heating cooling ducting/motors/blend doors etc… REALLY depends where under the dash they hid this little bugger. Bet its behind the Glovey…
You can also visit a place I have very fond memories of…“THE SAAB NET”…an absolute MUST for ANY SAAB OWNER HANDS DOWN BAR NONE…Look it up
I looked this up for you…Taken DIRECTLY from the SAABNET… If a Saab has a known issue…it is discussed at length on the Saabnet…YOu can Bank on it. I have owned over 10 Saabs in my lifetime…ALL 900’s tho… I may not have found your exact issue…but trust me there was plenty there to read about this and I couldnt copy n paste it all for you…Take a looksie for yourself, you will be glad you did…You can also ask other Saabnuts on that site…They LOVE to help you out and they ALL know whats up in Saab land…trust me.
BLEND DOOR ISSUES:
NOTE: On Saab 95 cars an issue exists which causes the blend door for the air mixture to fail causing you to not be able to adjust the inside temperature. Error code B2295-B2495 is the failure code for Tech2 (the Saab scan tool). What causes the problem is that the Left Blend door shaft gets broken which causes the blend door not to move correctly. The repair of this problem through Saab would require the entire disassembly of the dash and replacement of the heater box. The Right Side also can break which can cause the same type of problem. The left side happens much more frequently than the right side but the right sides do fail occasionally.Usually 12205 will repair your problem long term.
NOTE: There are a number of versions of this product on the market today. BE CAREFUL. There was a very large batch of materials that exist that not work long term. We have not seen one issue with the ones we make.
This is a common Saab 9-5 problem - most likely a broken “blend door stop arm” on the drivers side. The stop arm is a cheap little piece of plastic that, unfortunately, breaks all the time on these cars and causes the blend doors to stop working. With the car running, press the “ACC” and the “off” buttons at the same time. This will cause the ACC system to run its self diagnostic cycle (no Tech II necessary). You’ll hear the blend doors opening and closing (or trying to) and the fan doing its thing for about 30 seconds and then the ACC will shut off, OR it will display a fault code - again the most likely code you’ll see is “08”, which is for the driver’s side blend door stop arm. Sometimes you’ll get no code, or multiple codes, so run the self-test 2X. If you get code “08” at all, it’s almost certainly the stop arm. Less common is that the shaft that connects to the stop arm also breaks.
All of that said, this is an easy and inexpensive repair for an independent shop that works on SAABs. However, the approved “dealer repair” is to remove the dash and replace the entire HVAC assembly. If you’re handy, you can fix it yourself in about 30 -40 minutes, for about $35 in most cases. I just replaced the stop arm one my wife’s 2001 9-5 with a slick aluminum replacement version from The SAAB Site - a great website for SAAB FAQs, repair info and parts. If you Google “SAAB stop arm repair” or “SAAB blend door reapir” you’ll find lots of good websites with photos and detailed instructions. In the unlikely case that your stop arm shaft is also broken, you can buy an aluminum replacement shaft and integral stop arm for about $75. One of these two parts and simple repairs will fix your problem.
In either case, you need to find new folks to work on your car; a good independent shop that is familiar with SAABs can diagnose this ACC probem in 1- 2 minute, and repair it for .5 -.75 hrs labor. For a SAAB dealer to say they have no idea about this problem is simply embarrasing. Good luck - let us know how it comes out for you.
Many times what causes a broken arm on a blend door motor (not just SAAB) is that the motor has more movement in it than the actual door does.
In other words, by the time the door hits the stop one way or the other the motor is still trying to move it.
An analogy would be a pesky salesman sticking his foot in the door while you (the blend motor) are still trying to close it. 
This is a common problem on some Lincolns with EATC and I’ve been lucky enough to avoid this problem by setting the temperature at either 5 degrees from the coldest setting or 5 degrees from the hottest setting depending on whether heat or A/C is being used. That little leeway seems to help anyway.