90 Talladega SPG

[hutch]

Well I successfully installed the crappy washer solution to mount the rear shock, I didn't take any pictures but imagine a large washer on either side of the sheet metal They were actually the washers from the shocks on my 9-3 so I can pretend they are a Saab repair. Its very much a lazy fix but at least its solidly connected to metal now and feels much better driving around.

Along those lines I need to investigate the Abbott exhaust system, I absolutely love the sound but every once in a while I get a seriously loud backfire so I want to check if its a slight leak somewhere or if its just what cat-less cars do. I was driving home late at night last weekend from a concert in our downtown, in a shall we say, rather un-gentrified part of town, and had a hilarious backfire that sounded like someone was shooting a pistol and I saw some funny reactions

[hutch]

Well although real PA winters seem to be a thing of the past, with the dropping temps I decided to put the 15" wheels on the car and sort of get it ready to be put away for the winter. I'll still drive it around until we get salt on the roads but the sticky tires on the 16's feel all sorts of funny when they are not up to temp and one of them has a slow leak so I'm hoping to remove the tires and repaint the wheels this winter (hey maybe this year it will actually happen )

In other news I've become enamored with the AMP connectors found on the Trionic cars, so much so that I even used them when building some disconnects for speakers in a guitar cabinet. I had a decent collection of female plugs from the T5 harnesses but the past 2 trips to the junkyard I've been gathering the male sides so I can actually connect things. They aren't too expensive new but for like $10 I've collected a gallon zip lock bag's worth of them and they are all ready to be soldered, not a bad deal.

So with that in mind I decided to do some interior rewiring, I've had the weirdest issue with the right front speaker not working until I hit the brake pedal or use the turn signal I assumed it was a bad ground somewhere but also wanted to move the radio down below and gauges up top so I could actually see them while driving. The previous wiring I did wasn't awful but I cleaned it up and added the wiring sheathing I had leftover from the T5 harness.
I forgot to take a pic under the dash but here is the before:


And after:



I doubt I'll have any big updates anytime soon but the buzzword for 2017 is going to be body work. I'd like to sell my Viggen and possibly my convertible to get back down to 2 cars so if that occurs I may put aside some budget towards the rust repair on this car and maybe even some paint work. Other than that I am totally satisfied with this car and don't really plan on changing anything as its been dead reliable and modified just enough to be a ton of fun but not so much that its a chore to keep on the road and I plan on keeping it that way.

[Luke]

Very nice, that some clean gauge wiring!

[Krizzie]

Looks great indeed!

I still have to install my radio, so I might borrow some of this.

[hutch]

Thanks guys!

Wiring the power and ground for the gauges, as you all probably know, is sort of a pain because theres a lot of wires that need to feed down to one that goes into the power, in my case from the radio. When building guitar amps we use little terminal strips to distribute power but it seemed like a bad choice for this application so I sort of used the 'watershed' idea and had many wires feed down into a few, and then into one to make it easier to connect. Unfortunately I got my notes switched and tapped into the constant 12v and not the ignition so now the gauges are always on when connected, but it should be easy to fix.

Krizzie as I said I absolutely love these connectors, theres certainly no real benefit to using them but if you have them and are looking for a little fun project I definitely recommend them. I also used them to replace a backordered radio harness in my 9-5, its gotten to the point where if something like the toaster breaks I decide, well it probably needs an AMP connector

[hutch]

I should really know to disconnect the battery when I do this job as I've done it a handful of times, but without fail I forget and blow the fuse for the radio power when soldering in the new harness. Oh well, I had just stolen the same fuse getting rid of my 9-5's DRL so now I have radio and gauges again. And of course as soon as I decided to remove the summer tires its been abnormally hot again

Anyway, figured I'd see if anyone on here has any ideas on how to mount the gauges to the top DIN slot? I remember now I ran into this problem the last time I did this but don't think I ever came up with a solution. My problem is I can't really think of a way to screw it into anything without looking hideous, and I'm not sure I could really mount it to a radio cage either. Does anyone have any good tips on how to mount them to the dash?

[hutch]

Surprisingly easy fix for the gauges, I thought I threw this DIN cage thing out in the great parts purge but I found it in a box of misc stuff. A combination of bending the tabs around the gauges and a well placed zip tie and we're in business and the gauges are staying put...

[squaab99t]

F'in genius...
Mine just kinda lives in the top DIN via friction and close cell foam at a slight angle towards the driver.

Went to SEMA this past week. All sorts of gauges, but nothing beats the Classic VDO Cockpit series in matching the c900. IMO

[hutch]

Yeah its funny, when my friend still had a 900T his gauges stayed in just fine up top with nothing holding them in. I guess it comes down to the gauge panel, I think mine is from SAS but his came with the car so we weren't sure. Maybe how worn in the fascia is plays a role too

And yeah the Cockpit series really looks so at home in 80s cars, I can see why people would want different gauges if they are actually depending on them but since mine are basically just for fun they're all I'll use. If anything the gauges just cause more undue stress, aside from the oil temp I guess, the voltmeter always reminds me how awful the c900 charging system is and I gave Gary my oil pressure gauge since all it would do was make me nervous

[hutch]

Time for my 2017 State of the SPG address, mostly so I can motivate myself and in case anyone else wonders what things I'm spray painting this year

First off, this weekend was the first nice weather we've had all 'winter' and its amazing what a nice sunny day does to your motivation. Despite warnings of a La Nina winter its been very mild with little to no moisture all season so I probably didn't need to really put the 900s away for winter. But driving it again this weekend made motivated me to get some of these projects done. I might break these up a bit to keep them organized...

Audio
This was actually the first time I tried out the radio after I swapped locations with the gauges and ran into a bit of an issue, it seems my right speaker now no longer works at all, which is annoying, and there seems to be some phantom power keeping the radio on sometimes but not always. I had been thinking of how to get bluetooth into this car for a while so this may just push me over.

I was also talking to the guy who bought my Viggen about his old 900 that didn't come with a center console, and how I thought it was actually nicer that way. I think I am going to try to pick up one of these bluetooth amplifiers and wire in another pair of speakers I have laying around into the door panels since I can barely hear the rear speakers in the hatch and the door speakers add some well-needed bass to the trebly dash speakers in my 9-5. I think I'll be able to hide this in the glovebox and be able to totally get rid of the center console.
https://www.amazon.com/Planet-Audio-PSA ... dio+psa4cb



TE05-16G
I also decided to just go ahead and swap the turbo over while I do its yearly oil change in the coming weeks, I have all the gaskets etc and its really not a pain of a job so I just need to get around to it

I gave all the lines a soak in some of my beer-making sanitizer, its basically phosphoric acid which when properly diluted is around pH of 3.0. I didn't leave them in too long but for the cost and effort I figured it was worth it. The PNW guys probably just assume bolts just always look like this but I can assure you this east coast bolt looked worse beforehand



And since its me, I painted these just to clean them up a bit before it goes in. I also re-tapped all the bolt threads and put on the nice copper nuts as well as swapping in a lighter spring and greased up the Forge actuator.

If anyone has any advice I'd be very appreciative, since this turbo has sat on the shelf for a while I feel like I should run something through it to clear out any gunk that may have made its way in. My first thought was some gas or something else that would evaporate but I'm not sure how the seals would react to that.


Whale Tail
I've always been paranoid about this thing flying off the car on the highway due to the way it is held in place, as you can see its seen some things in its life. I put some epoxy over the holes, unfortunately didn't have a syringe or anything to really get it down in there so hopefully it sunk in, but ran out of time this weekend to refit it. I had thought about trying to epoxy in some nuts or something to really make it firm but I think the stock screws should be OK.



Radiator
While I'm swapping in the bigger turbo and the coolant is drained I want to swap in a radiator thats in better shape and ideally replace my noisy fans. I was curious if anyone has ever taken one of these apart and replaced the bearings or if its easier to just put in another used one or a universal fan? The only hole I saw on it was this one but I didn't want to just go jamming a screw driver in there and mess up the inside of it. Theres a local store that rebuilds Bosch alternators that I thought may be able to tackle the job but I'm assuming it would be cheaper to just get a universal one...

[Nate]

For the whaletail mounts, I milled down the fiberglass 1/8" and made some aluminum strips to run across the mounts & screwed & epoxied them in. 1000% better them trying to tightened screws into old brittle fiberglass.

[hutch]

Ah good idea! Now that you say that I maybe remember seeing pictures of that years ago, I will have to look into doing that, did you run into any issues with it scratching the paint on the hatch or was it recessed into the spoiler?

A brief update on the audio system, and hopefully I'll have some more tomorrow when I get a few more hours to work on it. The little bluetooth amp is really cool and actually really tiny so it should fit just fine in the glovebox. I saw this idea of mounting 9-5 speakers right into the door of a 900, actually thought it was a cool approach but I'm not too keen on cutting into the door:


So this is what I whipped up last night with some 1/4" MDF, I am not really sure if this will be the final setup or not. I could easily do it again in some nicer wood but since I'll be covering it, in something TBD, I may just let it be. I am worried about vibrations so I need to figure out a way to mount it. If I mount the speaker outside the enclosure there are many more mounting options, if I flush mount it inside it looks nicer and is a little more protected but it gets a little trickier to mount it in place.

[hutch]

Just a brief update during an otherwise slow time around here...

Got busy doing some other stuff including restoring an old Raleigh bicycle, and the cold-ish weather we've had meant I wasn't too keen on messing with the 900. However today was 'put an AMP connector on everything' day and I wired up the new bluetooth unit so all I have to do now is pull the pins out of the previous connector I made on the car side and plug it all in. And of course mount the unit, run new speaker wires to the doors, etc..

Theres now two separate plugs, one for power/earth, and the other for the 4 speakers, I didn't wan't anything too permanent because I wouldn't be at all surprised if I change my mind again down the road


Also saw these advertised for sale and scooped one up, it will mean getting rid of the volt meter but to be honest it never really told me much so I won't miss it. It hasn't arrived yet so I'm not certain it will go on but for $20 I figured what the hell...

[Nate]

Ah good idea! Now that you say that I maybe remember seeing pictures of that years ago, I will have to look into doing that, did you run into any issues with it scratching the paint on the hatch or was it recessed into the spoiler?

I milled down the fiberglass so that the strips were recessed in & flush with the fiberglass. I used a router kit for my dremel as the mill. I wasn't concerned about the paint as the hatch was rusty around the original spoiler's mounting holes. I just ground off the rust & painted it with a rattle can.