Looks pretty good! Sometimes when putting an H engine into a 99 there's some interference at the brake booster (bottom left corner when looked at it from the engine bay) and the alternator. A sledge hammer can help fix that. The remaining firewall just below that spot might be a little tight but it should be fine.

Geoff, is that with all the 99's or the early ones? The brake master / booster in the pre 73's seems like they would basically make it impossible to run a 16V engine.

The H engine in my 78 ems was mm away from the brake booster

Got the seat the other day, and installed it, have to get some pictures of it later on, looks good, fits good! My shoulders are right at the harness holes, width is a little loose for me, but not terribly so. Also got the gripper installed in the original 4spd, took out the welded diff, which was actually done surprisingly well:



Paul

So it will turn easier?

The seat!



The aluminum brackets available from Bimarco, kinda weird, but you can flip all the pieces around and get all different mounting options, which is handy.



Brackets to attach to the car, just used some unistrut, seems strong enough to me, will probably add another front to back brace on the other side as well just for good measure. Can also see the rough positioning of the hydraulic handbrake relative to the shifter, should work OK, but would be better if I had some sort of offset handle for the handbrake, but that can be dealt with later.



Engine bay at present, needs another coat of paint and it should be good (damn these are some blurry pics)



Wheel test fit, cause I couldn't wait to throw one of the cheap-o slicks onto something. Wheels are Epsilon, or Southern Ways 3-piece 15x6.5, and in terrible shape, but straight enough for a racecar, and just look right if you ask me. Gonna repaint the centers and call it a day, still deciding if I should use the slicks, or just get some sort of auto-x tire instead.



Fuel cell is all together and ready to go into the car



with the lid on



Grey paint should make the cell blend in a bit better back here:



Wheel wells are all grey now too.



The whole car might get painted that grey too, at least to start off with, Rustoleum Smoke Grey in case anyone is wondering, but firstly, this crap has to be dealt with



Custom 2 row crank pulley courtesy of Gary, should make it roomier back there



and finally, almost ready to drop the rear suspension in, the rear springs that came out are the mystery torched-to-lower ones on the bottom, going to put the red Intrax in place of them, looks like they're much thicker, but still about the same height, which should be good.



That's about that for now, have to find somewhere to machine a head so I can toss the motor together, and waiting on a couple of tees so I can get the brake lines squared away. More updates when something happens again!

Paul

Keep the slicks on wheels. I think we can use them at Jefferson. Then count your pennies and buy some Toyo R888 or some thing similar and put them on another set of wheels. Then we can test both kinds of tires and compare times.
Yeah, you have a little bit of work to do yet.

I only mounted one of the slicks, I think im gonna put them on the wheels that it came with, the odd 5 spoke turbine ones, and then use the 3-piece for a more street oriented tire since they're more blingy and whatnot, even though they're all beat.

Paul

ugh, those wheels look pretty bent around the lips. But I think they look neat in gold on the black car.
Progress!

Geoff wrote:ugh, those wheels look pretty bent around the lips. But I think they look neat in gold on the black car.
Progress!

Yeah, thats the worst one, the other 3 are pretty good. You can actually still get replacement lips apparently, but they're like $200 each .

Paul

You can probably make them better with a dead blow hammer.
File, sand, and buff the lips and the will probably come out good enough for a race car.

So, long time since an update here, things have happened, the car rolls, the engine is in, it more or less fits. The new goal is to be running by the Pagoda hillclimb, we'll see if that happens or not. But in other interesting news, I got an email yesterday from a guy that knew the previous owner and remembers the car running back in the 90's. He's working getting some pictures of it that he has scanned, I'll post them up here when I get them. What he had to say about the car:

f you’re still looking for information on it, it was raced in the SCCA MARRS series in the 90’s by Dairen Bell who was a mechanic at Scandinavian Motors. His Brother, Marshall Bell was part owner and Manager of the Bare Bones Rib restaurant in Gaithersburg,Md. I remember it did win one ITB race in the rain. If you want additional information about it, Marshall and Dairen own a restaurant in Rockville Md called Ring of Fire Grill. Marshall runs it, but I’m sure he could have Dairen contact you with the car’s details.
http://www.ringoffiregrill.com/contact-us/

I seem to remember one story about the front air dam. They had just put it on, but “SAAB” was upside down. Dairen was running at Summit Point and was hit going into turn one. It flipped the car, rolled over and landed on its roof with “SAAB” showing upright. Because of the roll cage, there wasn’t any real damage. If you want some pictures of it racing, I have some old ones I can find and scan.

Apparently he emailed Darien and he's not interested in talking about the car right now, which is fine, maybe I'll hear from him sometime later on, seems like the car has an interesting history. He also sent me a link to this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfBX6_iPH2Y

You can get a glimpse of it in some of these videos (just after the lime green BMW). It was usually running around 10th, but ITB used to be the biggest class and really competitive.

Pretty sweet!

Paul

LOVE the S&R embroidered seats! I've got the same Epsilons on my '80 - they look really good on an early Saab.

Great work on the prominance of the car.

1. Make sure to take it to that racecar thing at the simeone that we heard about at carlisle.

2. lets take it to that resteraunt and get some ribs!

You better get cracking Paul,... there is only 26 days until the Pagoda Hillclimb.