The old release arms are usually pretty grubby when I receive them. Compare an old one [right] to one of my reconditioned arm assemblies [at left]. What you can't see in the photo is how much slop was in all the joints and how bad the release bearing was.
I prefer to recondition a batch of these critters at one time. I did eight of 'em this go-around. If you look carefully you can see early and late release arms. The three on the left [top row] and one on the left [bottom row] are LATE arms. The rest are EARLY arms. There is no difference, functionally. Just a running change that Saab made at some point in the production of these parts, and not at all unusual for a car company.