85 900 Notchback arrives in Vermont

[airsweden]

My vote is be leave a running car alone til you have evertyhing, built, laid out and ready for a weekend at Chris'. Car is still CIS right?

[Crazyswede]

Nothing is coming out until something else is ready to drop in. Big task when the new drive train is ready to go back in is that the wiring harness needs to be swapped out. Current harness is already a day to day gamble on whether everything will work.

[Jordan]

Perfect time for Trionic

[Geoff]

The '85 head has equal sized intake valves and a cam that has different lift on each of the two intake lobes. Later cars have two slightly different size intake valves on each cylinder and equal lift on the cam lobes. This gives the intake a good swirly. If you put later cams into the '85 head you won't get that nice mix.

X2 on Trionic.

[Jordan]

Later cars had two different sized intake valves? I did not know that. I have an extrude honed '85 head sitting on the shelf at the shop. It's really cool but the ports are so tiny compared to the later heads I don't know what it would be good for...

[SwedeSport]

If you can get a set of pistons out of a later (84 ish) turbo, you can drop them into an H block and use the 85 head. They used the same pistons with that special 85 only head.

Using this combo just gives you an excuse to tell everyone "Yeah, it's got a Hemi".

[Crazyswede]

We need to start rounding up all the early 2.3 cranks we can.

[RobVonSAAB]

There is actually an 83 or 84 turbo 4 door at easy pull. The valve cover is still on it and the engine is complete...even the turbo is there. If someone needs the bottom end internals, i think it has 176k on it.

[Crazyswede]

I went down to Chris's last night and fixed my brake lights. Looks lile the previous owner put too much dielectric grease on the plugs and this blocked the current. Bunch of contact cleaner and a new bulb and i am legal again.



I also installed my lighter flywheel...car feels a little smoother now but nothing to crazy.

[Krasch]

Tried to sell an '85/'86 notchback shell on eBay not so long ago. Offered it at the scrap metal price and had no bids. I still haven't hauled it away, but as soon as I pull the gas tank it's off to the recycler. Maybe the Northern Minnesota location scared people off? Or is there not enough interest in the 900 2-door sedan?

[Crazyswede]

We like them...but getting a shell from minnesota is a bit pricey for most people here given location

[SwedeSport]

It's timing. All of us are already knee deep in projects.

[Crazyswede]

I have been driving the sprinter van most of the winter but the transmission is really not liking the extreme cold weather and the van currently has a dead blower motor. So I have been pulling the 85 out of the garage and driving it while the roads are dry as it only had summer tires on it.

So...Jon Williams had some old but still usable snows that I through on the car yesterday. I had only 3 lug nuts on one rear wheel because one had stripped last time I changed wheels. This time 2 more were stripping. Luckily Jon had saved some studs from other older cars and I was able to pull the rear apart and replace the bad ones. I also reattached one of the side hangars for the rear muffler so it clunks a bit less. The car is fun to drive but really is too low for Vermont and I need to get at least one spring spacer in the front and rear to raise it closer to stock ride height.

Other problem is the radio deck keeps shutting off at random and comes back on. Its a loose connection for sure. I can make it happen if I put the right turn signal on . And of course the backup lights wont work because the bulbs need to be cleaned or rotated again. Need a LED light board to replace that stock bulb housing which constantly causes problems.

[Crazyswede]

I am taking a road trip out to Colorado for a couple of weeks and taking the 85. To prep the car I wanted to put a quiet transmission in....the one in the car has a lot of pinion whine and it feels like things are shucking around (pinion lash?). It could be that this transmission would last 100,000 mile or it could have failed in 100. So I have a good one to swap in. While the engine is out I am doing a general clean up and reseal. I replaced the timing chain last night, cleaned up the head, and did a new head gasket. the old gasket looked fine but the pistons and valves were pretty well carbon covered. Tonight I hope to have the engine reunited with the new transmission and back in the car.

[Crazyswede]

The hardest part of getting this engine out was getting it out without destroying what is left of the sketchy 85 wiring harness. This shell will be the perfect canididate for a T5 16v swap and an updated lights and accessories wiring plan