The New Norman

A place for long term threads surrounding a specific project or SAAB build for motorsports or restoration
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Jordan
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Re: The New Norman

Postby Jordan » Tue Aug 12, 2014 6:36 am

I haven't weighed it yet, and there is for sure some more weight to take out of it, but I would take a guess in the 2150-2250 range. The turbo engine adds a lot of weight. I'll let you know when you we get it on the scales.

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Jordan
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Re: The New Norman

Postby Jordan » Wed Nov 05, 2014 8:50 pm

2215lbs wet without driver.

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RadioFlyer
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Re: The New Norman

Postby RadioFlyer » Thu Nov 06, 2014 12:09 pm

I made it down to see Norma take a few laps a couple weeks ago at Loudon. What a beaut'!

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Jordan
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Re: The New Norman

Postby Jordan » Tue Aug 18, 2015 9:17 am

Been a while since I've had the time to update the progress on this lady. But I feel like I've finally caught up to being some what prepared for our races and the car has done very well.

I've been transitioning from the LeMons circuit to a new group called AER (http://www.americanenduranceracing.com/) . Basically, it is like LeMons, but without the LeMons dog and pony show. No themes, no BS judging and they actually let you race without being penalized. This also allows a slightly higher level of modification as there is no $500 limit (which most A-class LeMons cars have surpassed eons ago anyway). The level of competition is high and the cars are very fast, but still within the reach of the average team budget. Many Spec E36/E46 cars , the fastest putting close to 300whp down. Overall though a mix of lots of different kinds of cars from all over.

So back to the car. As we were being more sucessful and spending more time out on the track. The current setups short-comings were becoming more apparent. Really we have had almost no mechanical failures, but transmission used tranny synchros were wearing out, our little TE05 turbo was weazing and I was worried about high EGTs and high inlet air temps causing some sort of catastrophic failure. At our inagural run with AER we lost some coolant due to a faulty expansion tank cap and the car was running hotter than normal. It had been some time since its last head gasket so I thought it could use a refresh as well.

First the transmission was changed to the S&R 4-speed. At the same time we decided that it needed a proper shifter as well. The 4-speed went together with a little resistance (mostly just me trying to source the right parts), but it seemed to come out just fine.

For the shifter, we based the the geometry off of the Luke's 9sport unit that we love so much and machined our own version. The car shifted great after a short break-in period, but we felt that not having a reverse lockout was making the 4-3 downshift difficult at speed. We redesigned the base plate to accept a lockout pin and gate system. Once the bugs were worked out of that, the transmission shifted effortlessly (as long as you double clutch!)
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To tackle the EGTs and inlet temps a front-mount IC and better flowing turbocharger would do the trick. I purhased the largest front mount unit I thought would fit and some universal piping.

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http://www.eeuroparts.com/Parts/76438/I ... DO88IC190/

I thought the end result came out very good. I used two 180* bend 2.5" pipes modified slightly along with a factory pipe and a 90 reducer coupler off of the turbo. I tried to keep the parts somewhat protected and off of the ground. Not having to have headlights made this much easier.
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For the turbocharger, I really wanted to go the disco potato route, but felt it was a little over the budget. Instead I went with an rebuilt Volvo turbo. A TD04HL-16T with the straight 2.5" housing. Being able to bolt up to the SAAB exhaust header at least took one issue I didn't really have to worry about. There were still plenty of other issues including the clocking of the center, inlet and exhaust housings as well as fitting the wastegate after doing so. Not to mention all of the oil and water plumbing.

I came up with this:
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I moved only the exhaust housing which made it difficult to fit the wastegate, but made the IC piping very easy and relatively close to stock orientation. We actually had a fairly good 3" downpipe that had been modified a few times, but it was always choked down to bolt up to the small tiny turbo. I made an adapter flange that took the 2.5" to 3" v-band to make exhaust removal easy and loose nuts a thing of the past. The Volvo flange is something we made up and should have available at some point in the future for those who want to use these turbos.
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Next the head. The obvious choice for me was to use a 2.1 head for its larger port sizing but also not having to create a custom intake and ancillaries for the T5 head was very appealing. I also had a few on the shelf. After a pulled the old head off, I did notice the gasket starting to go as well as some custom valve reliefs that the exhaust valves had left on every single piston. I wasn't sure if this was due to valve float under the 7000rpm limit of if someone had a bad mis-shift and over-reved the engine. None of the valves were actually bent and the bottom end had been good to us so far, so I just smoothed out the sharp edges in the pistons and moved on. After investigating the valves differences between the c900 and NG900 heads a while back I noticed that the T5 intake valves had a nice relief around the let ports yet still maintained the same stem thickness. They are also a few grams lighter than the standard intake valves. I thought this would be a good match for our head. Being 1mm oversized while the head was out being cleaned and surfaced , the new valve seats were cut. The Volvo 8v springs were used as well to increase the spring rate and keep the exhaust valves from floating at high RPMs.
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DeLorean
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Re: The New Norman

Postby DeLorean » Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:36 pm

Nice, your intercooler set up is very similar to ours, minus the fancy pipework, ours uses all stock junk yard parts from Saab NG 9-3 & V6 9-5's

You are also running the same turbo I have on my hill climb car. We had planned on running a junk-yard Td0415T, however we never got our pipework together in time. Maybe for a future development.

I see you have your engine oil cooler in the stock location, is your trans cooler still where it was the last time? If I recall correctly you had a stock 9000 engine oil cooler hanging out about where they are mounted in the 9000's right?

If we ever pull the head on ours, I think the volvo valve springs will be a nice update for our lemons car. The engine in ours is just a stock 250,000 mile bottom end with a junk yard 2.1 head & intake, I did the headgasket on it back sometime in the 200x's but it seems like it still has it where it counts.
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Re: The New Norman

Postby Jordan » Wed Aug 19, 2015 7:30 am

I was surprised on how inexpensive the universal stuff from DO88 is. That IC cost under 100 and the pipes and silicone couplers were probably $50. It is really well made too. Rubber just doesn't seem to hold up to the heat and the boost very well. I made my own "bead roller" out of a old exhaust clamp and some vice grips, a trick I'd seen a few people use before. Not the prettiest, but effective. No blown pipes.

Same cooler setup we had before. The trans cooler got angled slightly to clear the IC pipe. We actually started seeing some fairly high trans temps the last race, but I think much of that was just radiant heat soak from our down pipe. Temps were 280-290 when the car was really being pushed. We made some make shift heat shields which we are going to improve, but that seemed to help a little. I think we are going to tuck the coolers out of the way a little more to improve their airflow. We have a front splitter we want to run that will block airflow to the oil cooler, so that is another reason.

Our bottom end has been good to us. I think it was a 190,000mile jy motor that used to be in the old car. I had done the head gasket a few years ago, but since then the car was run hot and pretty much out of water. It was just showing signs of the gasket starting to deteriorate. Really running with straight water and then sitting is so bad for them.

At the same time we also did a big improvement to our fuel system (future post) and found a bottle neck before the race so it was fixed but kept de-tuned. With a fast driver at the wheel we still managed to put down the 2nd fastest lap time out of the entire field of 95 cars. The faster car interestingly enough was the Nissan 300Z with the B234R running a 19T turbo and an intercooler out of a 7.3L Powerstroke. So I don't feel so bad about that.

Here is a vid of the car running. Turbo spools up pretty nice and the top end has much better legs now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qW8WV4rWck

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Re: The New Norman

Postby DeLorean » Wed Aug 19, 2015 10:00 am

Rust in the wind (I think it was them) has a great video that's like 45 minutes long where you are swapping positions a few times, looked like it was a blast but was somewhat stressful to watch :-O
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Re: The New Norman

Postby Luke » Wed Aug 19, 2015 11:06 am

Those intercooler connections are always pesky when racing, another one of those failures that street driving can't predict... I always double hose clamped the problematic ones and also we found that texture powder coating the pipes helped a lot as well.

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Re: The New Norman

Postby DeLorean » Thu Aug 20, 2015 1:15 pm

Yeah, inter-cooler cost is impressively low. I think the stock Saab blackstone cooler is like $700 new, and an aftermarket all aluminum one that's 3X the size is about $100. Figure that one out... That's truly a "why not" question. Part of our intercooler hose pop-off issue was that initially we had both the boost and the wastegate tension too high. Jordan adjusted our ECU, I turned the base boost down, we could then hold a fairly steady 14 PSI which won't break the car and we never had another issue with our intercooler pipes popping off.
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Re: The New Norman

Postby KPAero » Fri Aug 21, 2015 3:37 am

Luke wrote:Those intercooler connections are always pesky when racing, another one of those failures that street driving can't predict... I always double hose clamped the problematic ones and also we found that texture powder coating the pipes helped a lot as well.


Some texture definitely helps, even just scuffing the bare aluminum with some gritty sand paper. Some brake clean on the silicon right before assembly can also help keep things together.

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Re: The New Norman

Postby Jordan » Fri Aug 21, 2015 6:34 am

Here is a a vid of Kip. He was staying ahead of the Rust In the wind. Not sure if it was in this video , but there is a good battle with them in the rear view. It would be cool to see the in car from their perspective.

http://youtu.be/qgo7g2TdK5g

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Re: The New Norman

Postby Crazyswede » Fri Aug 21, 2015 1:40 pm

KPAero wrote:
Luke wrote:Those intercooler connections are always pesky when racing, another one of those failures that street driving can't predict... I always double hose clamped the problematic ones and also we found that texture powder coating the pipes helped a lot as well.


Some texture definitely helps, even just scuffing the bare aluminum with some gritty sand paper. Some brake clean on the silicon right before assembly can also help keep things together.


you could get a hose that is slightly longer, punch a hole in one or two spots that fit over posts on the intercooler pipe, and then just clamp before it...maybe after...or do a double rolled surface like on the cv boots.
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