History:
Originally this car was built by Ron Wilcox and first log-booked in '01. It's an '84 3-door chassis that looks to be a purple-brown color. Later when Ron got out of SAABs he sold it to Len Schrader who campaigned it for a few years and finally ended up in possession of Kip and his friend.
The car originally had an 8v motor that was replaced a few times and set up for the 16v b202 ITB class. Over the years and engine changes, the chassis wiring was cut and spliced and cut and spliced to the point where things were kind of a mess of stray wires leading to nowhere. The catalyst for it being in my hands was that some electrical problem was causing a no start/poor running condition. Also, recent rule changes now allowed open engine management, which paved the way for some T5 development.
The goal of the build was to clean up the chassis wiring for trouble-free operation and serviceability, install Trionic harness into the car and develop the car as an ITB contender once again.
The car came to me sans-engine
It gave me the opportunity to clean up the track grime and start ripping out all the old wiring.
The engine was dropped off as well as a Quaiffe ATB from a blown up gearbox. It was disassembled, cleaned out and set to spec into the 5-speed transmission.
Of course digging into the car I found lots of things that needed to be fixed or were not up to par with the way we like to do things here on saabrally
The manual quick ratio rack needed a rebuild due to an exploded cup in the inner tie rod. Luckily this had one that was "99-style" and I was able to use the bronze cup left over from my 99 build.The clutch pedal had about 3/8" slot hammered into the pushrod pivot hole. I welded in a solid steel spacer to sleeve the hole for future reinforcement. The master was also weeping out the back so I tried the Jason "in-car" replacement method...that was not fun, especially with the cage
It came with a few header options, of course I chose the rustiest one because it had a nice v-band setup that was already fitted to the car. A little clean up and hi-temp silicone paint.
The engine was installed with proper stainless clamps and the custom T5 harness that would integrate into the new chassis wiring. After replacing some leaky banjo seals, the car started right up and was drivable even on stock mapping. An Innovative Wideband sensor was integrated into the Trionic computer for datalogging and tuning. Further tuning development is on hold until I get some replacement interface cables... hopefully this or next week.
A new fuel sender and VDO gauge were added for future enduro races. Guage lights were hooked up and panel was wired for easy removal.
I forgot to take a lot of before/after photos and nothing too recent, but I will try to document the build better going forward. Still lots to do as he wants to have full use of lights/horn and in-car fuse panel to replace the ceramic fuses the car originally came with.
