1998 900SE

[Crazyswede]

My daily driver for the last couple of years has been a 1998 NG 900SE. It was a free car and has needed very little work. It has 230,000 miles on the odo and the worst repair I have done is the clutch and clutch slave. Last spring the head gasket went and the flex down pipe finally got bad enough to need replacing. I decided to park the car for the summer and drive my 85 and my sprinter van.

I had a car dolly to move my 71 99 with so yesterday I towed the 98 to Chris Rizzon's shop to let him do the head gasket and down pipe repair. I had of course left the parking brake on so that both rear wheels were frozen..and had forgotten to disconnect the battery...so it was dead. We tried jumping it but it only moved a couple degrees...I figured it was hydrolocked. When I got the wheels free and towed it to Chris's. At Chris's shop I pulled the 4 plugs and found cyl #1 full of oil and cyl #4 full of coolant With the plugs out I layed rags over the holes and cranked it over a few times to clear the cylinders. Put the plugs back in and the car fired right up so I could drive it off the trailer.

Not much of a project really other than I want to make some better front suspension mount bits for this year as the bilstein shocks dont go well with the stock strut mounts.

[Crazyswede]

Since the first post the car has gotten a new head gasket, new down pipe, and just installed the used but nearly new looking Saab Sport SS exhaust I got from Hutch. The old system came off easily enough and was really shot. The new system went on very smoothly as well. I fired the car up an went for a test drive and the car is very quiet. There is a little bit of a louder exhaust note when under load going up a hill but overall I'd say it was almost quieter than stock. Very happy. Also installed all new brakes...front, rear, and parking. And also fixed the rusted out upper rear shock mounts.

Looked at both upper strut mounts today and realized both sides are cracked. I did measure up a new one on the shelf and will model up a replacement unit to machine out of aluminum. Planning on installing a uni-ball in the top to mount the strut through. A thicker aluminum plate and elimination of the rubber damper should help solve the problem...as long as the upper strut tower doesn't start to deform

The car is driving nicely and I have been getting 28 to 30 mpg on every tank. I think if I could sit on a reasonably flat road and maintain 55 mph 35 mpg would be doable.

[Crazyswede]

I took some measurements off of an upper strut mount that Chris had on the shelf and i am working on a CAD drawing for a new one now. I think If I pick up a 2" thick aluminum plate I can mill out the piece reasonably easily. I just have to decide whether to use a monoball style mount for the strut tube or some sort of urethane. Monoball is probably the easiest unit to size and find.

[SwedeSport]

Free cars are the best.

It is easy to justify throwing some money and time at it. If you throw 2,400 bucks at it, and do the work yourself, you can easily build yourself a car that you can get 2 (or more) years out of. At that rate it only cost you 100.00 a month to have the thing.

Most of us can put the whole deal-I-o together for less than 2400.00 too.

[Crazyswede]

[Geoff]

machining those radii is going to add costs

[Crazyswede]

machining those radii is going to add costs

not critical....makes the drawing look nicer

[Crazyswede]

This is a quick model based on the locations of the main holes and general thicknesses. I still need to take a few more dimensions and make sure my ratios are ok. The strut bearing rides on the underside sandwiched between the strut mount and a cap on the top of the spring. I need to get the dimensions of that bearing.

[Crazyswede]

After being off the road from last summer due to a broken idler pulley bracket I finally towed it downed to Chris Rizzon and had him repair the car. He luckily had another 900 parts car and did the work for me as its one of those tasks that is a pain. In the mean time I have learned that the bracket from a 9-3 can be used but you have to swap the tensioner and the idler as well. It apparently still uses the same belt.

Its nice to have the newer car back on the road...though the blower motor has stopped working again...suspect a flat spot on the armature...I hear they are not horrible to change out. The car is such a nice highway car but just no where near a C900 when it comes to handling and build quality.

[Crazyswede]

And of course I still need to address the strut tower issues, give the interior of the car a thorough cleaning, and put the snow tires on....though so far this winter I have only needed snow tires for about 4 days.

[Geoff]

With the mileage you have on that car, it's time to replace the blower motor. I did it on Kelly's 9-3 at around 200k miles and after it burned out two fan speed control switches (manual climate control). The worn motor drew more current which burned out the switches.

[Crazyswede]

With the mileage you have on that car, it's time to replace the blower motor. I did it on Kelly's 9-3 at around 200k miles and after it burned out two fan speed control switches (manual climate control). The worn motor drew more current which burned out the switches.

Damned blower motor only lasted 241,000 miles...such junk they make these days

[Geoff]

I blame it on all the computers they put in cars these days.

[DeLorean]

often times it's the connectors, or the ACC blower motor resistor. check those first.

[Crazyswede]

often times it's the connectors, or the ACC blower motor resistor. check those first.

I have to pull the front of the car apart to get at the blower so I can check all that stuff when I go in there. Usually when the resistor packs fail the motor still has high speed...this is because high speed is a straight through connection to the motor. It could be a loose wire or corroded connection but the car was sitting for about 6 months and it could be that the motor had time to finish seizing up.