Grassroots Motorsports: The Hardcore Sports Car Magazine

Our Saabaru hitched a ride up to its new home in Kentucky with the help of one of our readers, Jason. He’s on his way up to Cincinatti and wound up having an empty trailer. Problem solved!

We’ve decided to lower the price on our Saabaru to get rid of it a little quicker.

$13,000 w/ all the goodies.

Kim and Per have decided to kick the Saabaru loose. If you’re interested in this “semi-famous, semi-GRM project car” give Per an email at per@grassrootsmotorsports.com. We’re pricing the car at $14,000 with all of the goodies, extra wheels, etc.
It’s a red (duh), manual with 33k miles.

Team Dynamics wheels with fresh Continental ExtremeContacts
Swift Springs
KYB AGX struts
Hotchkis rear bar, Addco front
Hotchkis front strut bar, ebay rear
Katzkin leather interior
fogs
FHI rear skid
Primitive front skid (both skids are “unused”, never rallycrossed this car)

Car is located in FL.

email me at per@grassrootsmotorsports.com

Unfortunately, it wasn’t very snowy in Cleveland.

We drove the Saab up to Cleveland for the Christmas holiday. The new Continentals never saw real snow, but did slog through hour upon hour of wet and rainy conditions on both legs of the journey. They performed great and we’re happy with this tire choice.

The Continentals have an all-season rating, and they sure look the part.

We replaced our beat-up (but still awesome) Nittos with a set of Continental ExtremeContact tires. Our plan for the holidays is a trip up to Cleveland, so the Continental’s snow traction will be put to the test. So far they appear to ride nicely. We’ll put them to the test over the next few weeks.

This was the first time the Saab has had numbers on the side. So what if they were just the old panels from the MINI.

Since our new MINI is still just a gleam in our technical editor’s eye, we took the sports family truckster Saabaru out to a NCCC Corvette autocross in Green Cove Springs. While the course was more suited to a car with more power, like a Corvette (*cough*compensating*cough*) we had a blast, the car hustled through the slaloms with a near neutral attitude that could be changed to oversteer with a lift of the throttle or understeer with a little more gas. While FTD was set at a 44-second smoker by a uber-fast boosted Miata on 245mm wide Hoosiers, our street tire wagon managed a 49 second run.

We’ll be using the Saab for some upcoming tire tests of ultra high performance tires, including the Bridgestone RE01-R, the Falken Azenis RT-615, the Advan Neova and the Federal 595RS.

We received our set of eBay-sourced HID bulbs and ballasts yesterday. The install took about an hour, much of which was taken up by removing a few pieces like the battery and intake snorkel, as well as removing the glovebox.

The kit itself just requires that you connect two wires for each bulb, connect up the harness and figure out somewhere to put the ballasts (which are about the size of a deck of cards). The bulbs themselves were meant for the H1 bulbs that our car has and clipped in just fine. We cut a small hole in the back cover of the light assembly cover and routed the wires through. A rubber seal keeps water/condensation from entering the light.

We had to remove the glovebox to disable our daytime running lights as the reduced voltage that the normal low beams use for DRLs is not enough to fire off the ballasts and Xenon bulbs. The DRLs are disabled by unplugging a relay that is hidden behind the glovebox.

We’ll get some pictures up tomorrow, but our first impression is “wow” those work pretty darn well. We’ll see how long they last, but for $120, including shipping, they’re certainly in the category of “we’ve spent more on stupider stuff.” Now we need to upgrade our foglights. We’ll see if Hella has something that will work.

The Antee Web Wax works very well, almost like a cross between a polish and a clay bar.

We used Production Car Care’s Weekend Warrior wax pack to shine up the Saab yesterday afternoon. The kit includes a wash/wax concentrate, a wool wash mit, the Antee Web Wax pad, a Rejuvenator spray and a microfiber towel. After the car is washed, you wipe the still-wet car down in overlapping strokes with the Antee Web Wax pad, using the Rejuvanator spray as additional lubrication. Then you simply dry the car off with the microfiber towel.

The results are pretty darn amazing, the wax pad functions as a clay bar and polishing agent, all in one, removing contaminants and swirl marks. We were impressed. For $29.95, you get the advantages of both a wax and a clay bar, all in one. We’re starting to sound like a late-night infomercial, but we were amazed at the results.

We just received our 25mm front anti-roll bar for the Saabaru. This will be replacing the factory piece and is meant for the normally aspirated 2.5i version. We sourced it through Addco. We’ll be testing it on track next week to see how much improvement we get over just the larger rear bar (of course, we’ll also have to “rebaseline” our testing since we’ve reworked the rest of the suspension.

Per assembles the new strut.

We used OBX eccentric bolts to get more negative camber out of the 02-03 KYB AGX struts

Kartboy endlinks provide a more solid link between the anti-roll bar and the suspension.

The 02-03 KYB AGX struts require some washers on the rear shafts to work on our 2005.

The Swift springs are a direct-fit replacement for the factory units.

The end result is about 1/2-inch lower in the rear and 3/4-inch lower in the front. Handling is much improved.

We installed the KYB AGX struts and Swift springs yesterday, using a series of washers on the rear shock shafts and a pair of OBX eccentric camber bolts on the front to dial in some negative camber. The car sits less than an inch lower and handles very well. We’ve got it at the alignment shop now.