Saab 900 Notchback Rally Car

[Crazyswede]

Dropped the lower A arms off at the powder coater this morning and we pulled the engine out tonight. We also pulled out the brake booster and shifter assembly. Tomorrow we plan to pressure wash as much as the car as possible and hopefully finish some welds and finish prepping the wheel wells for paint.

[Crazyswede]

Small Setback. Block is bad due to sitting... hole in his for clearance to custom intake resulted in water contamination into cyl 3 and 4 which resulted in corroded cylinder bores. We have a block that will get bored over..hopefuly we can do this soon.

[Jon1]

I made a phone call this morning, Gary Nolan is running the machine shop at Tri-County Motor Parts in Glens Falls. Their hours are Monday thru Friday, 8am to 4pm. I will call Gary on Monday morning.

[Crazyswede]

I have been working on the car every single day since bringing back to Vermont with a roll cage. I had Thursday off and took Friday off as well and put time in every day since. We decided to pull the engine on Thursday so we could pull the head off and do a general inspection of things while cleaning and replacing gaskets and seals. This would also give us a chance to clean and paint the engine bay.



We also pulled the rear cover off the trans before pulling the engine.

S&R diff with 6:31 R&P:


With the drive train out it was only logical to put the shell on a rotisserie:



After an ungodly amount of time with a pressure washer I managed to strip almost all of the years of oil undercoating and asphalt from the underside of the car.



The last couple of days were spent touching up welds, applying paint stripper to the inside of the car and engine bay, and using the pressure washer to reveal the original metal layers. While it is getting closer to being paint ready there is still a bit of stripping to go.

[Jordan]

No, no, no, no. You're supposed to be putting parts back on the car.

Nice work though, I love the recommissioned rear axle rotisseries . What is with the nasty goo in the diff?

[Crazyswede]

No, no, no, no. You're supposed to be putting parts back on the car.

Nice work though, I love the recommissioned rear axle rotisseries . What is with the nasty goo in the diff?

We suspect it is old water contaminated shockproof or some equivalent oil.


we basically started going through everything on the car and decided not to rush it for the event in 2 weeks because the car would have likely been a mess to get it done in time. Decided to just concentrate on building it correctly and having a nice clean setup when done.

[Jordan]

Probably for the best. Just don't let Jon convince you to cut the floors out

[Crazyswede]

Probably for the best. Just don't let Jon convince you to cut the floors out

Yeah..luckily the floors are clean. The shell has had a few small spots we had to repair but overall the areas that are usually bad have been fine.

[Jon1]

Probably for the best. Just don't let Jon convince you to cut the floors out

What? I wasn't supposed to cut out the floors! Now you tell me.....

What about sandblasting? I wasn't supposed to do that either?

[Crazyswede]

Matt Weir came up again last night to pitch in on the car prep. While Matt and Jon worked on stripping my old 85 turbo block down to get it ready for its trip to the machine shop I continued cleaning the old paint off the floors. Once the Engine block was stripped I let Matt take over the floor task while I began wiping down the engine bay with laquer thinner.

[Crazyswede]

Update: latest news on the car is that the shell is still on the rotisserie. Matt Weir has been up a couple of times to help out and we are nearing the point where things start to go back together. We have most of the paint stripped off the floor and the engine bay almost back to its original color. A good portion of the car was sprayed with a black undercoating material prior to being sprayed with a white paint...one paint appears to have been decent quality with a rattle can on top . I have a couple of quarts of white urethane to spray the engine bay and interior/cage with. I had stripped one wheel well down to bare metal and hand painted that one with POR-15 which has set up nicely. Have to decide whether to do all of the underside in POR or just go the urethane route.

Rear calipers arrived in the mail. Still need to order the brake pads. Going to tr the Hawk DTC70's in the front and the DTC60's in the rear. Supposed to have very good power without being total rotor killers and having very good modulation.

Still on the hunt for a set that fits.

[SwedeSport]

I know you are not a big fan of the Kirkey aluminum seats, but you can get them custom made based on your measurments. You can buy additional padding , bolsters, and such, to taylor to your preferred comfort level.

They are not FIA certified though... is there a workaround for that?

[Luke]

Nope, for NASA rally sport all seats must be FIA, no exceptions...

[Crazyswede]

The Kirkey seats won't ever get an fia rating because they are made from aluminum and offer 0 energy absorbtion in a crash. Using one of those seats for rally would be like getting punched in both kidneys 1000 times in a row on every stage.

Thiugh I appreciate the suggestion.

[Jordan]

Using one of those seats for rally would be like getting punched in both kidneys 1000 times in a row on every stage.

Maybe that was on purpose.