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...
AudioThis 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+psa4cbTE05-16GI 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 TailI'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.
RadiatorWhile 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...