'73 Notchback Road Racer

[Jordan]

Déjà vu

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=340&p=3761&hilit=vented+rotor+hub#p3761

[Geoff]

Drew,
Thanks for showing us your nuts.
You'll be glad to know that you're not the only SAAB racer with shiny nuts.

Oh, the car looks real good too. You may not want to drive it, it's too clean. If you want you can ship it east for a few years and I'll make sure to get it all dirty and rusty so you won't mind beating on it when you get it back.

[DrewP]

What year 99 is this off of? It's on eBay UK and doesn't say, but looks like it has 900 style needles for fuel and coolant temp, and a 900 tach?

Only ask because I'm sorting out instruments to go on the car right now.

[DrewP]

^^^ Seeing that one up there is what spurned this project for today.

My LE came with the large clock in the right hand pane of the instruments, and since I don't plan on doing any timed road rallying, I needed to change it out for a tach.

Now, I could have used my (lately) normal approach and spent some money, but I realized I had a perfectly good 8k RPM tach from a C900 laying around, and I try to abstain from pulling C900 dashboards as best I can.

So I fitted it to the 99 cluster.







Three little screws come out the back....






...And then the tach needle head comes loose.







A kind of pesky lock tab holds once side of the board into the housing....






...And this spring clip on the back holds the ribbon contacts against the board, squeeze and remove.






Dials are the same size, pretty much.






I band sawed up the plastic mounting for the tach, took off the bulb sockets at the top, and brought the corners down, filed a few spots on the face flat so it would fit flush into the 99 cluster housing.





I trimmed it so that 2 of the mounting screws for the 99 clock / tach overlap edges on the 900 housing so I didn't modify anything on the 99 cluster. Just drilled a few holes in the white 900 housing and good to go.







Re-assembled everything, and now I've got an 8k RPM tach!

[Jordan]

Re-assembled everything, and now I've got an 8k RPM tach!

I should do that... I've got an 8k tach lying around... I wonder if it is any quicker than than the 99 ones... That is the biggest problem I have.

[DrewP]

I imagine so, will be a while before I can check it though but in the C900's it seems not to lag near as bad (if at all) compared to in the 99's.

To be fair thought all the 99's I've driven have revved up pretty slow.

[Jordan]

So how do you plan on wiring it up? Just solder to the contacts?

[GOLFGURU]

Hey Drew,If that tac doesn't work out,I have one from an Ems that would fit right in the cluster,the only thing with it is the clock adjustment gear is stripped..I owe you one and would be happy to give it to you..Joe

[DrewP]

So how do you plan on wiring it up? Just solder to the contacts?

I'll clip the ribbon connector out of a junk C900 and splice to that probably since I'm going to attach the dash fascias with 1/4 turn fasteners to make getting them on and off easy.

[Geoff]

Before you put it in you could consider swapping it with the speedometer cluster so that the tach is right in front of you (a la RallyHoMotorsports RallyCar Rev001). You'll want to look at it more often than you do the speedometer anyway. The speedometer cable will be too short to reach unless you re-route it or put in a two-piece 99T cable and put a longer section in place of once of the two pieces.

[DrewP]

I actually seriously considered doing that when I saw the screw pattern was the same for both, but I was a little hesitant to hack up my only 99 instrument bezel, but I think I will probably do that.

So much more race car that way.




In other news, do any of you have a junk car or body harness that I could buy this connector for the back of the info panel on the right of the dash, with fuel and temp in it? Otherwise I will just buy little round female terminals and make something work, but I was an idiot when we stripped the car and tossed the harness that came out.

[DrewP]

No one have that little round connector?

[DrewP]

David got pretty much everything left in the shell painted that needed it while I assembled the engine and trans I bought from Tom a while back.



Everything masked off








Shooting white









Some more masking inside the next day, and shooting black








The fun part, un-wrapping






"When I grow up, I want to move to Penn. with all the other racing 99s!!!"














Then when all that was done it was test fitting the assembled Tom Bier engine with 5-speed trans. The 5-speed case is actually slightly larger on the driver's side bottom corner than the 4-speed case I was testing with, and this one just hits the crossmember that passes under the engine, so I will have to do some more clearancing there.

The halfshafts fit fine enough, and no problems with steering or firewall or anything else we have done already, so pretty relieved there's no repeat of work needed.

[aero84]

Hi

Do you buy any chance have an part number for the C900 8K tach. or the even the complete cluster..
cant seem to finde any here in Denmark..

[DrewP]

Sorry, I cut the portion of mine off that had the part number on it, maybe someone else can help you there.

In the U.S. the 8,000 tachs only came on the very early 900's, 1979-1982 I believe, for 1983 they had the 7,000 rpm dial.