Shell Preppin '74 EMS

[GRMPer]

Did you drill out the spot welds to remove all of the little brackets from the tub?

very purty.

[SaabsBreakDown]

I love the steering column stay.

Do you plan on fitting a stock dash back on there?

[Luke]

Did you drill out the spot welds to remove all of the little brackets from the tub?

very purty.

Yep, you should try to pickup the bucket of all the misc tabs, brackets and mounts that I removed!

[GRMPer]

I'm actually not finding a lot of straight spot welds..this car has got a lot more "welding by an actual human" than I would have expected.

I decided to stop waffling around and stripped the interior last night to get at the brake lines. It isn't going back in, so next step, find a dewar for the liquid nitrogen to clean off the pans.

[Luke]

Yeah they definatly made good use of the mig on these things. A slim cutoff wheel and a Zirconium flap-disc grinder thing is your friend for cleaning all those up.

[GRMPer]

Ahh, good tip...here's what it looks like:

http://grassrootsmotorsports.com/news/c ... 7-saab-99/

[Luke]

Managed to get a little work on the cage done this long weekend.




Built some custom adapters for some radial mount rear Alcon calipers I picked up a while ago. Same 35mm piston size as the Volvo brakes but easier to adapt and about 1/3 the weight.


Also double plated the front motor mount area and got it ready for a "tripled" front cover.

[GRMPer]

Nice..sounds like we were both busy this weekend! I got more suspension work done and made the mounts for the skid plate.

I like that cage design. I'll probably copy it closely.

Per

[Luke]

You wouldn't be copying me really, its basically straight out of the FIA regs! The roof reinforcement and rear diagonal setup is shown in FIA drawings 253-22 and 253-14. This setup is also gaining popularity in WRC.

[GRMPer]

Sure, but I was debating whether to do an X in the roof and then an X in the back downstays, but I like how the V in the roof is backed up by the V in the downstays.

[Luke]

A few more updates:


Finished the foward cage extensions. They are "let into" the front fender wells both for strength and clearance.


also fully welded where they pass through the fire wall:



The shock towers are not built yet but the tubes meet right where the connection to the towers will be.. they are just left long for the time being.



Some extra reinforcement was added to the front cross member:



The taco gussets were fabbed and the welded to the main X junction as well as a little connector tab to strengthen the harness bar.


Finally I picked up a nice stack of used but great shape 2wd sized michelin rally tires from Burt Arano at union 7 who is moving his shop from PA to colorado soon.

[GRMPer]

Looks good, how(can) the stock dash fit back in there?

[Luke]

some trimming required, but the stock dash without the lower fake woodtrim thing should fit.

[matt]

Are you leaving the custom dash for later in order to focus on more important things?

[Luke]

Nope, I am still planning on a custom dash but it would be possible to use the stock one even with the cage, but most likely it would just need some trimming at the corners.