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Saab Progress Apr 26, 2007
With everyone off to the Mitty, the Saab progress is going to stop for a few days. Here's where we are at:
Almost all of the rust on the passenger side of the car, including the front and rear wheel wells, passenger door, trunk and battery tray, are fixed. There's one spot on the inner fender near the tie rod that needs a patch, but that will be easier with the suspension arms and shocks out of the car, something we see happening a little later down the road.
There is a Centerforce clutch on the way to us. This will replace the oil soaked one in the car. We ordered and received a new rear main seal if that's part of the problem in there.
Also, we've ordered another set of four Carroll Shelby rims. That gives us seven. Our goal is 11 of these wheels, six for rally tires and five for tarmac tires.
After we get back from the Mitty, we'll probably have the clutch and get that done. That will allow us to take the car to the tag office and get it official-like. Next, we'll work on the rust on the driver's side of the car.
More later.
Clutch Job on a Saab. May 1, 2007
We installed the clutch last night. We just need to fill the coolant system and the car should be good for daily driving.
The clutch in an older Saab can be removed with both the engine and transmission still in the car. The trick is this removable input shaft, which comes out the front of the transmission case. The radiator needs to be removed to make this easy.
We used a Centerforce clutch. It's got weights on the clutch tines to increase clamping load as RPM increases. The flywheel side of the Centerforce Dual-Friction disc is a carbon-composite puck style. The pressure plate side is a more traditional lining. The result is streetability, with good holding grip.
We're wrapping up the rust repair on the passenger side. We POR-15'ed the repaired areas. This will be followed by some seam sealer in the non-cosmetic areas and filler on the areas that are visible.
Saab Gets Tagged May 2, 2007
We drove our Saab 99 for the first time this morning, swinging by the tag office to get our license plate. Since the 99 is now 30 years old, we get to register it as an antique, meaning cool blue plates and a lowered rate.
The only problem we encountered on our 20 miles of driving was the speedometer appears to be non-functional and we sure could use a tach. Luckily, the car came with a spare EMS cluster that has a tach, so maybe its speedo will work as well.
Stay tuned!
Cluster Work. May 3, 2007
The Saab wasn't originally equipped with a tachometer, as that was only available on the sportier EMS versions. The previous owner, Luke Sorensen, just happened to have the EMS cluster that he threw into the deal. We started the installation this morning.
The tachometer takes the place of the large clock in the right portion of the cluster. The clock is now smaller and inset in the bottom of the tach.
Our only problem has been trying to reconnect the speedometer, as there isn't a lot of slack in the cable.
The wiring was pretty simple, there was already a ground wire for the clock back behind the cluster and we used a local brown (switched positive) wire to hook into. We just had to run one new wire from the coil negative (terminal 1) into the dashboard area.
Saab cooling and wheels May 7, 2007
Our original radiator was functional, but was clearly on its last legs. We got the new replacement on Ebay for $49.
We also beadblasted and painted all seven of the Shelby Minilites. We used Duplicolor's "High Performance" wheel paint in silver for the finish, followed by their clear coat. They look good, we'll see how this finish lasts on stage.