James,

Very interested in seeing the homologation papers! If you get a chance to scan or just photo copy them I'd love to take a look.
I heard that you were unable to get a logbook because of your cage. What was the issue they were having with it? Rally America just announced that all new cages must be built to FIA rules which is what I'm assuming yours was built to. Seems with some minor updates like roof box diagonals you'd be rolling. Or is the diameter too small or something? Get that thing out and on the stages! I'd say the two events not to miss next year are West Virginia and BRS. Both are the lowest cost events on the calender and both have the best roads I've driven.

[quote="
if my girlfriends and my street cars stopped braking maybe i could work on the rally effort...

james[/quote]


Perhaps you should just put your money into the girlfriend...that way you get to ride her to work everyday and save money at the same time....not much I bet.

yeah J-Fox, I'd like to see those homo logation papers too!

a few pictures of the old car and the skid plate setup on it:



attachment point:



Rear attach point:




Front view of car with skidplate:




and part of the reason why I dont have a rally car build budget:

Wow, thats amazingly close to what we came up with.
Does the rally car have some old bridgestone rally tires on it? They look identical to the ones I have mounted on some old minilites.
You know you need to get that thing back together, its just begging to be run again. Sell some of those damned 2 wheeled contraptions!
I dream of the day you, me, Geoff, James, Mike and John Groo can all be on the start list for a rally. To quote arlo guthrie, "People would think its some kind of movement, and friends that what it is"

Yeah in my dream we have cars fielded by you, james, geoff, myself, mike white, and groo. But That old car isnt worth putting back on the road. The cost of the work and parts involved just dont make sense. I need to fix the wiring and swap in another transmission and then it will back in service as a rallycross car and ice race. It basicaly needs a new roll cage as the old one is so far from legal...wrong size tubing...etc. I do have a fairly clean shell to use that I haven't posted on here. I am working on paying off a couple of debts first.

As far as the 2 wheeled contraptions go...riding them is like going rallying whenever you want to.

this is a trail we rode a couple of weeks ago, I filmed this with my new cannon S3 camera:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... rman&hl=en

and yes those are old bridgestone rally tires....I have run several rallyX's on them and they work pretty well. Big open blocks are great in the loose and deep stuff.

Yeah, those Bridgestones are the second best thing for deep mud and grass. I was amazed how fast I was able to get that car going in wet clay.

hmm, first time posting ever, anywhere, how exciting? luke and co., very nice job you've done here, with the site and your car, you are my inspiration. i have a few opinions about things related to saab rally but i'll keep most of them quiet for now... as to your new skidplate design i have a few comments based on my observations... i crewed at 6 national events this year for matt johnson (PGT Subaru National Champs) and his VtCar skidplate weighed about 30 pounds and was held on with 4 bolts and it never moved... but saabs are different so.... slot the mid/rear bolt holes front to rear about 3/4 inch and make sure the width on all of them is oversize a bit, you'll be surprised how much the plate will stretch, you won't need more than 4 or 6 bolts to hold the plate to the frame, either recess the bolt heads in the plate or build up around them with a big washer or other barrier as they will deform greatly from all of the punishment they receive, be careful of that front curve of the plate... my first skidplate had a similar curve (as does seth's old car) and i found that it had a tendency to run into things rather than run over them, my second plate was longer and flatter and skipped over things more easily, keep an eye on the middle mounts of the subframe to the car, as the skidplate loads the subframe those mounts will want to spread outwards (a natural result of the angle of those mounts to the car body) allowing the sub frame and plate to collapse closer to the sensitive parts of the car you're trying to protect... see how the middle mounts on seth's car (2nd pic) are set so the load distributes vertically into the frame of the car... a thick piece of closed-cell foam rubber glued to the plate and up against the gearbox will help keep the rocks out. i'll send you a pic of my way overbuilt and heavy as hell set up soon (it needs a redesign) , but, 17 rallies and only 2 dnf's (a-arm, and electrical) 2 grp NEDIV Champs and no broken gearbox casings... and the basics on my car... 2850 lbs wet with spares, 110hp 114 torque, closeratio w/lsd and 30:30 chains and still couldn't spin the front tires off the line, oh and i never changed the brake pads....

Crazyswede,

Fix that car. Stop thinking of reasons why not and start thinking of reasons why you should.

has anyone thought of fitting a sheet of stainless over the alloy on the sump guard. You drill and tap the alloy and use countersunk allen head bolts to hold it on. the stainless prevents gouging of the alloy by rocks etc. making the guard last a lot longer. This was a requirement made by Andrew Cowan for the "round Australia trial" car we built years back and it works a treat!. No it wasn't a Saab.

I've thought of doing the same thing with thick plastic like UHMW. But my problem hasn't been as much wear on the aluminum as it has been the things getting bent to hell and pushed into the gearbox.

Luke wrote:James,

Very interested in seeing the homologation papers! If you get a chance to scan or just photo copy them I'd love to take a look.
I heard that you were unable to get a logbook because of your cage. What was the issue they were having with it? Rally America just announced that all new cages must be built to FIA rules which is what I'm assuming yours was built to. Seems with some minor updates like roof box diagonals you'd be rolling. Or is the diameter too small or something? Get that thing out and on the stages! I'd say the two events not to miss next year are West Virginia and BRS. Both are the lowest cost events on the calender and both have the best roads I've driven.

Homologation papers will get scanned at some point- don't hold your breath though! I haven't a scanner yet.

I could log it with NASA, maybe with Rally America- it had current Sweden FIA papers when I bought it. The real reason is I don't like the cage. It's not the cage the factory put in. The factory raced it with a aluminium cage (bolt in of course) which was banned from competition in the early 90's. I think the guy I bought it from had this cage put in and man are the welds spotty. So I probably could tech it, all the right tubes are there, but I wouldn't really trust it to deal with a hit like I took at RNY. So until I get a new cage in it I'm not going to do more than maybe a rallycross with it.

The homologation papers aren't some huge eye-opener, just a cool read whilst on the potty.

james

I have seen a skid plate in some old saab lit with high carbon steel runners running down the length of alum plate. Which supposedly acted as ski's and kept the plate from falling in.

If I remember correctly there were 2 or 3 of them. I think 3

The early 99 and 96 plates were made from arched steel or aluminum (cant remember which) and they had 2 or 3 ribs of steel/aluminum running front to back as you described. They acted as skis and helped to strengthen the plate.